LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap........ Copyright No. 

Shelf..L.^i'1 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



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CriA/LO 







Or the 
management 
of poultry 
on a large 
scale for 
commercial 
purposes 




A practical manual and reliable handbook upon producing egg's and 
poultry for market as a profitable business enterprise, either by itself or 
connected with other branches of agriculture. 



By H. H. STODDARD 

For many years editor Poultry World and American Poultry Yard, 
Author of An Egg Farm, etc., etc. 

An entirely new work, embodying all that is most valuable from the 
author's first book, to which are added the results of a lifetime of work, 
invention, improvement and observation in the vast and growing commercial 
poultry industry in all sections of the country. 

NEARL Y 150 ILLUSTRA TIONS 



New York 

ORANGE JUDD COMPANY 

1900 



TWO COPIES RECEIVED. 

Library of Con gr $« % 
Office of the 

DtU2-1B99 

Register of Copyright* 



57080 



Copyright 1899 

BT 

ORANGE JUDD COMPANY 



CXkka 



8EC0ND COPY, 



■-I- 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

FIG PAGE 

Portrait of Author— Frontispiece 

1 Diagram for egg farm -_---..- jg 

2 Coop of growing chicks - - - 24 

3 Stone cutter's dray - ----- 27 

4 Scraper for dry earth --___.-_._ 29 

5 Shovel for dry earth - 30 

6 Platform for drying earth ------ 31 

7 Loading dry earth -------- 32 

8 Bottom of dray -_..--. - 33 

9 House for layers— winter arrangement - 36 

10 House for layers — summer arrangement ... 40 

11 Winter quarters for laying stock ----- 41 

12 Pen for moving fowls ------- 42 

13 House for early hatched pullets ------ 48 

14 House for breeders _---... - 52 

15 Tard and houses for breeders - 53 

16 Movable fence - - • - 54 

17 Feed shelf ------- - - 55 

18 Hammer for feed shelf - 56 

19 Sash pulley ---------- 5,3 

20 Office and watch house ------- 59 

21 House for sitters --------- 63 

22 House for sitters— interior _■_-_._ 64 

23 Plan of yards for sitters ------- 66 

24 Coop for sitters --------- 76 

25 Apparatus for sitters -------- 77 

26 Apparatus for sitters -------- 78 

27 Ground plan of hatching house - - - - - 82 

28 Section of covered yard - - .''... - . 83 

29 Interior of hatching house ---... 84 

30 Feed shelf and gate ----- . 86 

31 Inside of house for sitters ._.--__ 94 

32 Details of apparatus for sitters ----- 97 

33 Coop for hen and chicks ------- 98 

34 Boards and cleats -------- 99 

35 Diagram of -coop --------- 100 

36 ' Feed box for cTiicks - - - - - - - - 100 

37 Feed box with grating _■______ 103 

38 Arrangement for opening feed boxes - 105 

39 Dubbed White Leghorns - - - - - - - 107 

40 Manner of numbering nests - - - - - - 126 

41 Eggs laid by old hens -------134 

42 Eggs laid by pullets -------- 135 

43 Shelter for chickens --------- 136 

44 Shelter of rails and straw - - - - - - - 137 

45 Granary and cookhouse ------- 139 

46 East side view of granary showing driveway - - 140 

47 Ground plan of granary and cookhouse - - - 142 

48 House for early chickens - ■ - - - - - - 143 

v 



LIST OP ILLUSTKATIOXS. 



49 Hospital for egg farm - - - - - - - 144 

51 Tedder for stirring litter 147 

52 The harvest - 148 

53 Weeder and soil stirring implement - 150 

58 Netting for feed dropper ------- 153 

59 Strips soldered together ------- 154 

60 Feed cylinder - - - 155 

61 End piece of feed cylinder in position - 156 

62 Crank for wooden shaft ------- 157 

63 End of row of feed cylinders - - 159 

64 Fence ratchet ___.__--. 160 

65 Eow of feed cylinders ------- 161 

66 Chicks responding to food signal ----- 162 

67 Wrought iron crank -------- 163 

68 Crank wheel --------- 164 

69 Crank ----------- 161 

70 End of shaft 165 

71 Details of tilt box and cylinder - 166 

72 Tilt box— reverse of Fig. 76 ------ 167 

73 Using the tilt box -------- 168 

74 Tilt box on pole ---------169 

75 Device for jarring feed apparatus ----- 170 

76 Transverse section of tilt box ------ 173 

77 Interior with tilt boxes ------- 174 

78 Eow of tilt boxes from end ------ 175 

79 Tilt boxes partly turned ------- 176 

80 Tilt boxes turned -------- 178 

81 Fowls at exercise -------- 180 

82 Series of runways -------- 181 

83 Ground plan of runways ------- 182 

84 Apparatus seen from the end ------ 184 

85 Crank with set screw -------- 187 

86 Exerciser for water fowl ------- 188 

87 Shaft and collar --------- 191 

88 Wooden lever for axle of tilt box - 192 

89 Feed pouch ---------- 193 

90 Bounded bearing for square shaft ----- 194 

91 Transverse section of axle shatt - 195 

92 Shaft for outdoor feed boxes ------ 196 

93 Shaft partly revolved ------- 198 

94 Shaft, pouch and cylinder ------- 198 

95 Shaft, pouch and cylinder ------ 200 

96 Pen and yards with row of feed cylinders - 202 

97 Homemade shaft and cylinder ------ 204 

98 Block and bolts to fasten tilt box to axle - 205 

99 Wooden spool frame, etc. ------- 207 

100 Transverse section of Fig. 99 ------ 208 

101 A feeding sieve --------- 209 

102 Brooder house, lamp system ------ 210 

103 Alternate system for brooder house _•'-_- 213 

104 Lid of feed sieve --------- 214 

105 End view of feed sieve ------- 215 

106 Pen with feed sieves -------- 216 

107 Spiral spring ___-__-'- 217 

108 Top view of sieve -------- 217 

109 Protected feed shelf -------- 218 

110 Feed box on wooden shaft ------ 220 

111 Shelf with concussion bar - - - - - - 221 

112 Caster wheel under shelf ------- 222 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATION'S. Vll 



113 Lever for feed shelf -------- 223 

114 A substitute for tilt box - - 224 

115 Shelves with cleats and bar ------ 225 

116 Apparatus for moving shelf ------ 226 

117 Transverse section of house for layers - 227 

118 Longitudinal section of house for layers - 228 

119 Apparatus for moving shelf ------ 229 

120 Crank made of piping ------- 230 

121 Piece for attaching shaft to spool - - - - 231 

122 Homemade apparatus for moving shelf - - - 232 

123 Feed trough— side view ------- 233 

124 Feed trough closed, side view ------ 233 

125 Feed trough apparatus _____-■— 236 

126 Trip gong bell - 237 

127 Wire for gong --------- 237 

128 Interior alternate system ------ 238 

129 Transverse section of house, alternate system - - 239 

130 Ground plan of house, alternate system ... 240 

131 Tilt box for brooder chicks ------ 241 

132 House for layers --------- 242 

133 Large hand wheel -------- 243 

134 Screw pulley ---------- 243 

135 Ground plan of house for layers - - - • - - 246 

136 Hot water heating system ------- 247 

137 Brooder house ------- - 249 

138 Shaft with winch -------- 250 

139 Plan of brooder house ------- 251 

140 Ground plan of brooder house ------ 253 

141 Tilt box with flap - 254 

142 Tilt box, parallel system ------- 256 

143 Light tilt box --------- 258 

144 Tilt box, parallel system - - 262 

145 Watching chicks at exercise ------ 264 



CONTENTS 



Chapter page 

I Introductory ---.... i 

II Location ----._.« 8 

III The Colony System 17 

IV Supplying Their Needs 26 

V Houses for Layers ------ 35 

VI Houses for Breeders - 51 

VII Houses for Sitters ------ (52 

VIII Houses for Sitters in Mild Climate 74 

IX Management in Mild Climate - 92 

X Coops for Chickens ------ 97 

XI Fowls for Layers and Sitters - - - 102 

XII The Kinds of Food ------ 112 

XQI Breeding and Incubation - - - - 118 

XIV Management of Sitters - - - . _ - 125 

XV Management of Young Chickens - - - 130 

XVI Additional Buildings 139 

XVTI The Intensive System 146 

XVIII The Exerciser - - 152 

XIX The Tilt Box 158 

XX Outdoor Exerciser ------ 178 

XXI Success with Ducks ----- 186 

XXII Perfecting the Details 190 

XXIII For Soft Feed 206 

XXrV Alternate and Parallel Systems 212 

XXV Healthy, Vigorous Birds 235 

XXVI Business Poultry Farming - 245 

XXVII Artificial Incubation 261 

XXVIII Requisites of a Good Incubator - - - 266 

XXIX Care of the Eggs ------ #81 

XXX The Incubator Room 298 

XXXI Brooders - - - - ... . . 304 

XXXn Method of Heating and Ventilating Brooders 312 

XXXIII The Brooder of the Future 322 

viii 



AN EGG FARM- 



CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTORY, 

During the last thirty years, farming has been divided 
into specialties. The history of modern industry shows 
that it is only through division of labor that the" preci- 
sion and skill can be attained that become necessary as 
competition constantly grows keener. Improvements 
in methods, and the invention of labor-saving machinery, 
are sure to follow the establishment of an industry as a 
specialty. Sheep farms, farms for milk, others for but- 
ter, or cheese, small fruits, vegetable truck, etc., are not 
only common, but there is a further division — a gardener 
raising as a principal crop nothing but onions or celery, 
an orchardist nothing but peaches, and so on. 

Eggs and poultry for the great cities are now produced 
in part by extensive establishments systematically con- 
ducted, instead of there being an entire dependence 
upon the old, haphazard way of a few on each farm. 
The production of eggs, rather than poultry meat, must 
always be the key to the poultry interest, because raising- 
pullets for layers brings so many supernumerary cocks, 
that these, with the fowls past their prime, always keep 
the dressed poultry side of the market better supplied 
than the egg department, and therefore special estab- 
lishments for raising table poultry, winter chickens and 
ducks in the northern states excepted, will not, in the 
long run, be demanded. 

1 



2 AJS" EGG FARM. 

a 

Aii account of "the state of: the art," to date, of 
poultry raising as a separate branch of industry, should 
include, not merely the progress made, but a forecast of 
the future. It is only by comparing the present with 
twenty or thirty years ago, that the magnitude of the 
great revolutions in industrial affairs can be realized. 
In general, it may be said that the principal movements 
have not yet spent their force ; but great as the changes 
have been, they will, in the next few years, be vastly 
intensified. A generation ago a little of almost every 
principal article of food was raised on every farm, and 
all consumed within a few miles, comparatively, of 
where it was produced; while now food production has 
not only been divided into separate branches, but the 
main divisions have been split into an almost endless 
number of subdivisions, and articles are common on 
every table that have been carried thousands of miles ; 
this differentiation will go on further and with greater 
rapidity than has happened already. 

The tendency of the times is to improve transporta- 
tion, not only by the main railroads, but by the smaller 
lines and the common roads, a tendency which promotes 
the selection of the very best locality, as regards soil and 
climate, for carrying on any particular branch of food 
production. This choice of the best place, aided by the 
great modern development of cold storage, and the con- 
tinually increasing facilities for transportation at reduced 
rates, will continue to augment the production of poultry 
in the South Central states, or what may be called the 
northern tier of the Southern states, and especially the 
region to the south, southeast and southwest of Kansas 
City, and enhance the imj^ortance of the extensive or 
colony plan of management best adapted to a mild cli- 
mate, and which will be described in the following 
pages, and the intensive plan, pursued on a compara- 
tively small plat of ground, will also receive due atten- 



IXTRODUCTOBY. 3 

tion, since it has, by the late invention of labor-saving 
machinery, been made more feasible than previously, 
while the art of artificial incubation has also been per- 
fected. Modifications of both the intensive and exten- 
sive systems will be fully described to suit the varying 
needs of localities as diverse as those in our country of 
magnificent distances, while the false and unnatural 
plans which have ended in ruin during the twenty years 
that have seen the principal progress in poultry affairs, 
will be treated but briefly and as a warning. 

In managing' animals of any kind, we must follow 
nature, for she will neither follow us nor be driven. 
The domestication of animals was only possible at the 
outset by proceeding ou a natural groundwork. To 
illustrate : Man domesticated dogs that, when wild, fol- 
lowed one of their own number as a leader, by installing 
himself as leader instead — so naturalists state — and the 
cat will never be domesticated in such a way as to fol- 
low her master when he changes his abode, because 
originally a solitary animal. Just so the domestication 
of fowls was effected by building upon an original foun- 
dation. In understanding the nature and needs of 
poultry, it will assist if we investigate the condition and 
habits of the wild parent stock in India, for the nature 
of all animals remains essentially the same for long 
periods. The transfer of our domesticated birds from 
forest to farm has affected their life and most important 
habits surprisingly little. The tame fowls have the 
same cries of warning to each other, and other language, 
that observers have found them to use in their native 
jungles ; they still hide their nests in some corner, just 
as if they were selecting a nook in a thicket ; and they 
are attached to the premises where they live, as they and 
all other gallinaceous birds are to some small district, 
when wild. The wild jungle fowl is by no means for- 
eign to our subject ; and in attempting to manage poul- 



4 AN EGG EAEM. 

try by thousands, only a proper regard for original 
nature will prevent failure. According to this nature, 
they live during the breeding season in distinct families 
under polygamy. Each family group has, by tacit 
agreement, a part of the forest for its beat, and the 
exclusion of strangers of the same species secures privacy 
and tranquillity. They have their freedom, and in that 
word are comprehended the needful exercise, sun, pure 
air, shade, and varied diet. 

Some plans upon a large scale have comprised small 
separate flocks without freedom, and others have 
embraced large flocks in freedom without separation; 
a third plan, and better than either of the foregoing, 
being to keep small flocks separately, yet in full freedom. 
Small flocks at liberty on distinct farms have been kept 
successfully during centuries, because the owners were 
unconsciously imitating the natural groups of the wild 
jungle fowls. . It has been found that when a flock of 
twenty, ill free range on the farm, gave a handsome 
profit, anil the number has been increased to hundreds, 
all in .onetflock, with the idea of correspondingly multi- 
plying the gains, an unnatural mob has been formed, 
the hereditary instincts violated, and laying checked. 
The confusion has not, however, lessened the amount of 
feed consumed, and pecuniary results have been the 
wrong way. When it is attempted to divide the num- 
ber, and place them in separate in closures, the results 
are still far from satisfactory. Small flocks kept- yarded 
may be multiplied on the same farm to any desired 
extent ; but their wants can be all supplied only through 
an amount of labor that eats up the profits, unless the 
mechanical apparatus we shall describe in the following 
pages is used, the invention of which was the most 
important step ever taken in poultry culture since fowls 
were first domesticated. In this land of high wages, 
the expense of attendance determines, to a great extent, 



INTRODUCTORY. 5 

the success of the whole project ; hence the importance 
of the new system of poultry keeping by machinery. 

Keeping fowls as a business should be regarded as a 
species of manufacturing, grain being the principal raw 
material,, and eggs and poultry meat the finished prod- 
ucts. The value of the products, of course, exceeds 
that of the raw material ; but if the labor cost is not 
carefully watched, it may eat up the difference. The 
menace which will always hang over the keeper of poul- 
try on a large scale, is the competition of the ordinary 
farmers, villagers and suburban residents, who enter the 
market incidentally merely to dispose of surplus. 
Every owner of a small flock of fowls pours his little rill 
of poultry products into the great market stream any- 
how, irrespective of profit, and this makes it hard for 
the big establishment. It is, in this respect, like farm- 
ing, in which so many are working for a living that it 
is next to impossible for anybody else to farm on a large 
scale for money. Or it is like the instance of the girls 
behind counters in the large stores, who usually receive 
very small wages, in some cases not enough to pay for 
decent board, the reason being that there are so many 
girls wanting places who have nothing to do and who 
can board with their parents. The increase of the 
number of small flocks of fowls, consequent upon the 
diffusion of population in the suburbs by means of the 
trolley lines, adds to the difficulties of the large scale 
operator. The big plant cannot stand this sort of com- 
petition unless labor-saving contrivances are used. 

This is a "machine-ridden" age. Industrial inven- 
tions have revolutionized society, yet the transformation 
is far from being complete. One man now performs 
the work formerly clone by fifty men, in making textile 
or metallic goods, or of thirty men in producing, milling 
and transporting bread stuffs ; but the mission of inven- 
tion, as concerns feeding mankind, is far from perfect 



6 AN" EGG FARM. 

fulfillment. The raising of animal food is to be rastty 
improved. Crops have been cultivated cheaper, and yet 
cheaper, as year by year better agricultural implements 
and machinery have been devised, but in tending domes- 
tic animals, whether they are horses, cattle, sheep, 
swine or poultry, but little, comparatively, has been 
accomplished to diminish the amount of labor. Now it 
takes more time to tend the farm animals of the United 
States and care for their products — butter to be churned, 
wool to be sheared, steers to be fattened, colts to be 
broken and trained for sale, and so on — than it takes 
hours to raise the grain and forage these animals eat, 
harvest. the same and haul it to mow or granary ready 
for consumption. Here is a great field for labor-saving 
inventions, a field white for the harvest. Machinery 
must be used in doing chores. Where horses or cows 
are kept in considerable numbers in the same stable, 
mechanical appliances have already been employed by 
the writer to supply them with water, hay and grain, 
lessening the labor very materially, and a way has been 
found to clean horse stables by machinery. Sheep for 
fattening are now fed in immense numbers with grain 
by specially constructed feed hoppers ; milking machines 
are being perfected, and swine can be fed and tended, 
horses curried and brushed, and young horses have been 
broken and trained by the writer very satisfactorily 
indeed, no matter how incorrigible they were at the 
start, by the aid of machinery, at a great saving of time. 
The first outlay for almost every modern machine is 
much greater than was the cost of the old-fashioned 
hand tools it superseded. But the sum total of the cost 
involved by the time the machine is worn out doing 
good, is less under the machine system than it was under 
the hand tool system sixty years ago. Otherwise, mod- 
ern machinery would not be labor saving. The reaper 
and binder does the work of a file of men with cradles, 



INTRODUCTORY. 



and another file to rake and bind. The price of the 
ponderous thing is greater than what cradles and rakes 
would cost. The farmer pays his harvesting bills for 
eight or ten years in advance when he buys a reaping- 
machine that will lust that length of time ; that is, he 
hires fewer harvest hands for eight or ten years. His 
grain is cut, virtually, before it is sown. It is cut in a 
machine shop one thousand miles away; the reapers 
wear aprons and paper caps, and work cutting the farm- 
er's grain in a factory he never sees; their wages are 
higher per diem than what cradlers would get, but his 
harvesting costs him less the new way, or there would 
be no labor saving about it. Just so in the new system 
of poultry keeping by machinery; there is the mechan- 
ic's bill at the outset. The machines will last many 
years ; those which are indoors will last during the 
poultry man's lifetime. If the wages of the mechanics 
who construct them, including interest, amount to less 
than the wages of employes saved or superseded during 
the twenty or fifty years the apparatus lasts, interest on 
the wages included, then there is labor saving. Xow, 
in any line of industry, no good machinery, well adapted 
to accomplish the work for which it was designed, ever 
yet failed to save labor, and the poultry machinery 
described in this book saves a greater per cent of labor 
than does the average farm machinery. 



CHAPTER II. 



LOCATIOX. 



A location near a city secures certain important advan- 
tages. An article produced daily the year through, and 
which is prized for being fresh, should be raised as close 
to a market as possible. Thus the highest prices may 
be obtained, the special aim being to supply the demand 
for better eggs than any can be that are packed and sent 
great distances. Under the system which now supplies, 
to a great extent, northern cities, there is the time spent 
in collecting eggs from various sources, to wdiich must 
be added the time for transportation, and the time they 
are in the dealer's hands after arrival. Then the jarring 
is more or less injurious, and after it, eggs will keep but 
a little while. They pass through so many hands that 
no one in particular is responsible for the character of 
the article. Under a better plan, eggs are delivered 
directly to consumers, families being visited regularly 
once a week. The egg route has this advantage over a 
milk route, that it need not be traversed so often, only 
a sixth of the whole being traveled daily ; thus the 
expense of delivery is not great. As a team must be 
sent to town every day to collect stale bread from the 
bakeries, waste bits from the meat markets, etc., eggs 
can be sent, when only a clay or two laid, with no extra 
trouble. If disposed of at stores, an arrangement should 
be made with the dealer whereby they may be kept in a 
separate lot, and sold under the name of the producer. 
Consumers readily appreciate eggs, butter or other prod- 
uce that comes from a regular, responsible source. 

8 



LOCATION". 9 

When a lot is mixed with lots from other farms, its 
individuality is lost ; if good, it may only be helping to 
sell the poor article of somebody else, and the producer 
does not reap the benefits of his pains in increased cus- 
tom. ISTo produce can be supplied to city dwellers to 
better mutual advantage to seller and buyer, than new 
laid eggs delivered direct, the dubious ones in the mar- 
ket causing much loss and vexation. 

Poultry farms, at the west, have the benefits of cheap 
land and cheap grain ; and at the south the season is 
earlier, and on the Atlantic coast, especially, cheap 
transportation by water is available. But the value of 
manure in some places at the north is so great, that it is 
more economical to bring grain here from the west than 
eggs, the latter being so troublesome to send by rail. 
Butchers' waste, procured fresh, being almost absolutely 
necessary, is an important consideration in favor of 
proximity to a city. When it is seen that high prices 
for eggs depend on the latter being produced near by 
and delivered fresh, and that the labor is no greater to 
raise them close by the market than at a distance at 
lower prices, with a deduction for transportation and 
breakage, it will be readily seen that there are certain 
special advantages in a location near a big northern city. 

The site should not be far from a railroad freight 
depot or wharf. The amount of western grain needed 
is large. Hauling this many miles by team is too costly. 
Enriching wornout northern farms by feeding out grain 
from the prairies, is an indirect way of importing their 
rich mold. Therefore, we take care that this importa- 
tion is judiciously contrived. A mill near by, for grind- 
ing, is desirable. A tract of arable land may be found 
(though rarely), surrounded on all sides by either woods, 
swamps or rocky pastures, so that there need be no dan- 
ger that the fowls will stray into tilled fields of adjoin- 
ing proprietors. In case such a farm could be procured, 



10 AN EGG FARM. 

the great expense of a fowhproof fence all around it 
would be saved. If the tract is unfortunately bounded 
by cultivated lands, then it must be so large and of such 
cheap quality, that a border twenty or thirty rods wide 
may be afforded, to be kept in permanent pasture. The 
land should be upon a slope, for there must be a quick 
surface drainage after heavy rains ; but the pitch should 
not be so steep as to prevent easy wagoning. A southern 
or southeastern inclination gives a proper sunny exposure; 
and if there is a belt of woods on the north to break the 
winds, so much the better. If near swamps, sea 
marshes or damp river valleys, the site should be so ele- 
vated as to be out of the reach of the worst raw, chilling- 
fogs. We have enumerated all the above qualifications 
as necessary to a site for an egg farm, and it may be 
added that most of these apply whether the plant is in 
the northern or the southern states. Their combination 
with certain essentials of soil, which we shall state in 
another place, makes the matter of selection one of con- 
siderable difficulty. Many more important points are to 
be attended to than in choosing a place for ordinary 
farming or gardening. 

A SOUTHERN LOCATION". 

While proximity to a northern city has become more 
important year by year, in one sense, because a greater 
proportion of the whole population of our country, and 
of all other countries as well, is, as time rolls on, found 
in the large towns ; yet there is, however, another aspect 
to the case; for transportation has received such an 
immense development that it is possible to utilize 
extremely favorable distant sites, formerly unavailable, 
for poultry raising. By going a tier or two of states 
further south from our northern farms, poultry plants 
may be established under more favorable auspices, in 
many respects, for supplying the large northern cities, 



LOCATION. 11 

than can be afforded by sites near at hand. Just as 
early fruits and vegetables have, within a few years, 
comparatively, been raised in prodigious quantities at 
the south for shipment to New York, Boston, Chicago 
and other northern markets, under a regular organized 
system of gigantic proportions, we may look, in a short 
time, for something on a correspondingly large scale in 
the movements of poultry products. By seeking a 
milder climate, the construction of expensive winter 
shelters and the cost of fuel for warming them and 
carrying on artificial hatching and rearing, may be 
avoided. 

The climate of the G-ulf states, and of all the extreme 
south, will never be as favorable for poultry as the 
region of the latitude of North Carolina or southern 
Kansas. The high trans-Missouri plains, owing to the 
prevailing dryness and great purity of the air, afford the 
best sites for poultry farms in the whole country, the 
southern portion of this great area being the best. In. 
all the region from the Dakotas to northern Texas, 
fowls of all kinds thrive amazingly. It is easier to raise 
a forty-five pound turkey in Nebraska than a thirty-five 
pound turkey in New England, from the same strain. 
Southern Kansas and vicinity, where winters are less 
severe than further north, lessening expense, as popula- 
tion increases in the cities of the northeast and of the 
extreme south, where the climate is unfavorable for 
poultry, and as railroad lilies are multiplied, running 
north and south between British America and the Texas 
Gulf coast, will become the best locality in the United 
States and in the world for the raising of poultry prod- 
ucts in prodigious quantities. Grain is cheaper in this 
region than in any other, and is likely to remain so for 
a long time. 

Unless the proportion of freight rates should be mate- 
rially altered, which is unlikely, it will continue to cost 



12 AN EGG FARM. 

less to transport eggs and fowls from this region of cheap 
corn to points where both corn and poultry products are 
comparatively dear, than to ship to the latter vicinity 
the grain from which these products are formed. Sev- 
enty years ago nearly every pound of provisions in the 
whole land was consumed within twenty miles of where 
it was raised; but now, since "many run to and fro, and 
knowledge is increased," there is a growing tendency 
toward shipments to great distances. It is common 
for the market to contain food supplies, the principal 
articles of which are from various localities a thousand 
or two thousand miles apart, while some are from even 
the most distant parts of the globe. A natural law of 
competition, as persistent as the attraction of gravitation, 
compels the production of commodities where the facili- 
ties are the best, unless the freight to the point of con- 
sumption is great enough to offset these.facilities. But 
freight rates grow less and less as the machinery of 
transportation, like all other machinery, is constantly 
improved. 

In treating of a location near a northern city, the 
advantages of delivering fresh eggs at an extra price 
direct to the consumers, without the intervention of a 
middleman, were set forth. A portion of the whole 
number of large scale poultry men will continue to avail 
themselves of these advantages, yet the tendency will 
be, in the future, for the production of a great and 
increasing proportion of eggs and poultry meat at points 
hundreds of miles distant from the consumers. The 
science of distribution — if it may be so called — has been 
constantly improving, the machinery of the produce 
commission business having been brought to a great 
pitch of perfection. Even the multiplication of depart- 
ment stores, which marks an important era in the dis- 
tribution of commodities, has a bearing on our subject. 
As the retail food market division of one of these great 



LOCATION. 13 

establishments is handy, the housewife can personally 
inspect her purchases, which she would probably not do 
if it was not made so very convenient for her in connec- 
tion with her shopping in other lines, while facilities of 
electric cars and horseless omnibuses are constantly 
improving, so that communication is easy and quick 
between the department store and the home of the cus-' 
tomer. The tendency of all inventions is to mass pro- 
duction at a few points remote from consumption, hence 
many poultry operators will, in the future, be diverted 
from a suburban region of high priced lands to a locality 
of cheaper acres and a more favorable climate. 

Transportation is king and governs every department 
of industry. In the case we are considering, not only 
has improved transportation rendered distant sites feasi- 
ble, but it has, through the means of trolley lines, 
checked, to some extent, the great increase of city 
homes, and by stimulating out-of-town residence, has 
added to the numbers of suburban people who raise eggs 
for their own families, with a surplus to take to the city. 
In other words, they leave the ranks of buyers of poultry 
products and become producers themselves, thus adding 
to the supply of near by raised strictly fresh eggs. 

The production of eggs at a point remote from the 
large city market has also been made more feasible than 
formerly by the recent improvements in cold storage. 
It is true that nothing will ever quite equal a newly laid 
egg, but eggs absolutely newly laid when put into cold 
storage, will, the following winter, turn out to be very 
good indeed, even if not "fresh laid," and will meet a 
great demand at high prices. Eggs collected from ordi- 
nary farms by itinerant hucksters, or accumulated indis- 
criminately at grocery stores and then taken to cold 
storage, will always be more or less in bad repute. 
Hence the advantage possessed by the proprietor of a 
poultry farm on a large scale, where every nest is visited 



14 AN EGG FARM. 

daily, on system, and freshness of product guaranteed 
absolutely before put in cold storage. 

The cold storage feature will, in the future, dominate 
in fixing the areas for the production of a large and 
increasing proportion of the enormous quantities of 
poultry products which our hundreds of millions of peo- 
ple yet to be will consume. The great packing houses 
for beef and pork at the principal cities of the middle 
west have grown with wonderful rapidity to a colossal 
size, pointing out the belt of country where animal food 
can be produced at the greatest advantage. Dressed 
poultry is already kept and transported from the trans- 
Mississippi region on an immense scale, by the same 
means as beef and pork, in the carcass, besides being- 
canned, the principal operators being at Kansas City ; 
but all that has been done, thus far, in this line is but 
as a drop in the bucket. The big eastern and northern 
cities will be supplied more and more in the future with 
poultry products from the southwest ; particularly from 
southern Kansas, northern Texas, southern Missouri, 
Oklahoma, Indian Territory and Arkansas, although 
southeastern Nebraska, southwestern Iowa, and all of 
the area tributary to Kansas City will contribute to the 
immense volume of eggs and poultry which that great 
southwestern paradise of fowls will produce. 

THE KIND OF SOIL. 

The soil should be adapted to cultivation. Those 
who advocate a waste or sterile tract make a great mis- 
take. Every rood should be capable of cultivation, and 
rocky or bushy land avoided. Shade may be artificially 
provided at a small cost in a manner to be hereafter 
described. It is necessary to raise crops, in order to get 
the full advantage of the manure. It exceeds in value 
that made by any other domestic animal, because it is 
from rich food more thoroughly digested than is the 



LOCATION. 15 

case with quadrupeds. The scrapings from the roosts 
might be carried to another farm, it is true, but the 
nearer they are applied^ the less labor; and the drop- 
pings where the fowls range, and at every coop of small 
chickens, etc., are too valuable to be lost, and cannot be 
gathered up save by the roots of plants on the spot. In 
order to distract attention from the main business as 
little as possible, crops of the simplest management 
should be mostly grown, and only those that can be con- 
sumed by the establishment — grass, clover, alfalfa, cab- 
bages, lettuce, onions, potatoes, beets and other roots, 
large quantities of oat or rye straw, and the balance, 
grains of various sorts, corn especially being always in 
order. The principle of division of labor, carried out to 
full extent, would forbid our raising crops at all, were 
we able to gather all the manure and sell it for what it 
is really worth. But, as we have seen, much will be 
wasted unless there is tillage, and there is no price estab- 
lished for such manure ; and if there were it is, under 
our system, all immediately mixed with earth, making 
it unfit for sale. 

The quality of the soil may be poor, or worn-out at 
the start, thus securing cheapness ; but it should be of 
a sort to which it would pay to apply valuable manure. 
For the sake of the health of the birds, choose a warm, 
dry soil. Land which dries quickly after rains is the 
kind ; and another test is, whether it is ready for the 
plow early in spring. If it will produce peas or water- 
melons earlier than common, Ave are not far wrong. It 
should not be clayey or gravelly, but a sandy loam. 
Gravel for a subsoil, low enough down never to be 
reached by the plow, would be excellent, making a nat- 
ural underdrainage ; but gravel at the surface troubles 
the fowls In their rolling and dusting. A supply of 
hard gravel for the use of the birds should be screened 
to a proper size at some other place, and hauled to the 



16 AN EGG FARM. 

spot, and put in boxes for the use of the birds. The 
soil should answer for dry earth for the roosts and for 
dust baths, the loam being of a sort easily reduced to an 
impalpable powder. This is important, because we 
depend upon pulverized dry earth all through the busi- 
ness, to secure the cleanliness and health of the birds 
with the least possible labor. A great deal is said in 
poultry books and papers about the importance of clean- 
ing the roosts frequently. We do not clean ours oftener 
than once in three or four months. The labor of going 
the rounds daily in a large establishment, thoroughly 
scraping floors, and removing manure, would be enor- 
mous. We set all our fowl houses on a ridge of earth, 
thrown up by plowing several times toward the center, 
and surround with a shallow ditch for surface drainage 
after heavy rains. Thus we secure dryness, wet being 
the foe that must be kept from the fowls at every stage. 
Then in winter a bed of dry earth, six inches deep, is put 
inside the houses instead of a floor, and a couple of 
inches added monthly if needed. The birds may be 
depended upon to cover their own droppings, not only 
daily, but hourly, when not at roost, a thick cloud of 
dust being raised every little while. The houses will 
always be freer from taint than if floors were used with- 
out dry earth, and scrubbed with soap and sand three 
times a day. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE COLONY PLA1ST. 

A system of detached, widely separated poultry houses, 
movable or immovable, called the colony plan, is suc- 
cessful, because it secures natural conditions, especially 
exercise, cleanliness and pure air. Needing a large area 
of ground and making the attendant travel long dis- 
tances, it is appropriately designated the extensive sys- 
tem, as contrasted with the intensive system, which 
concentrates the birds and buildings and employs the 
labor on a small space. 

One of the best methods on the extensive principle 
and with movable houses, we will first describe, as it 
has been carried out during the last twenty years in 
nearly or quite every state in the Union, with various 
modifications to suit individual requirements or notions. 
The intensive plan has its own merits, which will be 
considered in the proper place. 

Upon the colony poultry farm there are no yards, 
excepting for some special purposes, but we imitate a 
country town, where is stationed at every farmyard a 
flock at free range. This method we know has suc- 
ceeded for hundreds of years, since men became partly 
civilized ; so it is no new experiment, and it is based on 
a state of things still older, extending beyond the period 
of domestication. Across a tract of 62^ acres, 100 rods 
square, run parallel wagon roads, 10 rods apart, with 
fowl houses located quincunx style every 10 rods. In 
this way each house is surrounded by six others, and 
is 10 rods to 11 and a fraction, from each. Now, when 
2 17 



18 AN" EGG FARM. 

a flock is attached to each farmyard in a village, and 
runs at liberty, the premises may be as near each other 
as 8 or 6 rods even, without danger of the birds 
straying, ordinarily, when once fairly domiciled. This 
is because the neighbors' premises have a different look, 
and the buildings, garden, orchard, shrubbery, and 
fences serve as landmarks to enable them to find their 
way back. To make each flock upon our tract know its 
home, we have three styles of buildings, so unlike in 
color and other respects as to be distinguished by their 
occupants, and these alternate in such a way as to pre- 

9 o ' # ® O 



■ m © o © 

s" 

I 
I 

I 

l» O ..' # • o 



• • °_ f 

\% o • @ o 

FIG. 1. DIAGRAM OF EGG FARM. 

vent mistakes. Here the ancient instincts of the birds 
are our reliance, their powers of discrimination in regard 
to locality being very strong. It must be kept in mind 
that any faculty which was of use when the race was 
wild, may be definitely counted on, unless it has since 
been persistently bred out. The buildings are white, 
black, and uncolored, in succession, so that the six 
immediately adjoining any one are none of them like 
itself. The white and black coloring are of the cheapest 
sort — lime wash and coal tar. 



THE COLONY PLAN. 19 

In the diagram, Fig. 1, the quincunx order is shown, 
and the position of the wagon path is indicated by the 
dotted lines. The alternation of the colors of buildings 
will be understood from the white, black, and shaded 
dots, but the diagram represents only a small portion, a 
corner merely, of the main area of the farm occujjied by 
the colony buildings, and the reader should imagine the 
roads extended a great distance at the right in the cut. 

While pursuing the experiments which led to this sys- 
tem, we early perceived that while a flock thus situated 
would stay near home so long as no person approached, 
when feeding them we were followed by birds from 
neighboring flocks and there was confusion. Besides, 
so accustomed do fowls become to associating the sight 
of their keeper with a boon, that they will follow him 
from one station to another, when on his rounds col- 
lecting eggs, or attending to other matters. True, their 
ability to find their way back is wonderful, but fighting 
follows the meeting of birds that are strangers, and thus 
the quiet and order so essential to laying are impaired, 
and also frequent association of this kind will, after 
a while, break down all distinction between neighboring 
flocks. Such a trouble would be fatal to the whole plan. 
The solution of this difficulty is original with our sys- 
tem, and the key to its success. The feeding business 
is the cause of the trouble, and the only reason why 
fowls follow their keeper. The remedy is to bring about 
the feeding indirectly. From earliest chickenhood the 
birds, or the greater part of them, are brought i\j> so as 
to never perceive that the keeper has anything to do 
with their feed. The small coops for young chickens, 
on a separate part of the farm, have boxes where the 
feed is placed, and a simple contrivance attached, that 
does not admit the chickens until some time afterward. 
This device will be explained when describing coops and 
other fixings for young birds. Adult fowls are given 



20 AN EGG FARM. 

soft feed early in the morning in a feed box in their 
house, so constructed that the keeper is not seen by them 
at all. All the hard grain for the day's allowance is 
deposited in or under a pile of straw outside, before they 
are let out of the building, and they scratch for it at 
intervals through the day. This employment is very 
salutary to their health and spirits, and assists in keep- 
ing the flock together. The bright eye and keen faculty 
for prying and searching are employed, instead of the 
birds moping or standing listless. They feel as if every- 
thing was right and natural, and their contentment 
influences laying to a surprising degree. 

If straw is plenty and cheap, as it is in some parts of 
the country, scatter it liberally and sow grain urjon it by 
any good broadcast seeding machine worked by a team, 
and follow with a hay tedder, alternating with a side 
delivery horserake whenever the straw becomes scattered 
too much. Or the driver of the hay tedder can drop a 
slender rill of grain with one hand, while managing his 
team with the other. If straw is too expensive, as it is 
apt to be if within fair shipping distance of a city, a 
plow can be used, every month or so, to loosen the soil, 
preferably, as we have seen, a loose, sandy loam, and a 
harrow employed to cover the grain. This harrow 
should have very short and slender teeth, a homemade 
affair constructed of one-inch or half-inch boards or 
two-inch planks, through which round nails or spikes 
are driven, answering better than the harrows in the 
market, as it will not do to cover the grain too deeply. 
The best thing of all is a wire drag, made by fastening 
numerous barbed wires to round poles of the size of a 
man's arm, or to scantling, or waste strips of board of 
various dimensions, if more convenient, by means of 
ordinary fence staples. This drag is cheap, simple, and 
effective ; it will accommodate itself to uneven ground, 
and as it is of light draft, you can make it very broad 



THE COLONY PLAN. 21 

and take a wide sweep. Lay the poles or scantling on 
the' ground about two feet apart and parallel. Staple 
the wires on, three inches apart, at right angles with 
the poles. If the ground to be harrowed is uneven, you 
should saw about two poles out of three into three-foot 
pieces, so that in operation it will, undulate to fit the 
swells and hollows. Of course, there must be a sizable, 
long stick at front to which the team may be attached. 
Get plenty of help to turn the ugly thing over work- 
wise, without tangling, when it is done, so that the 
poles will he on top and the wires on the ground. This 
wire harrow is also an excellent thing for every farmer 
who sows broadcast turnips, millet, clover, alfalfa, tim- 
othy, or any very small seed, and preparatory to nice 
gardening, it will make the soil fine as snuff, saving 
labor with the hand rake. 

By broadcasting the seed before the fowls are let out 
in the morning, the sight of the keeper is associated 
with no gift or boon, whatever, and scrupulous care is 
taken during the fifteen or eighteen months that limit 
the lives of most of the main laying stock, never to 
throw them, directly, a morsel of food. This precau- 
tion of indirect feeding is not, however, carried out 
with the small classes of sitters and fowls with pedigree 
records, as will be explained hereafter. All motions 
near the indirectly fed fowls should be slow and gentle; 
they should never be frightened, and should regard their 
keeper with neither fear nor aversion, but with total 
indifference. The two points, of differently appearing 
premises at different stations, and indirect feeding, both 
being attended to, we are enabled to keep separate flocks 
in freedom upon one farm without yards. The method 
of overcoming, by use of a team, the loss of time in 
attendance caused by the scattering of the buildings, 
will be described in its proper place, as. well as the ways 
of securing throughout the greatest economy in labor 
and lumber. 



22 A.N" EGG FARM. 

As it is impossible to raise any crop on vines, stalks, 
or trees above ground or below it, that hens will not 
damage, crops are put on one-half of the ground each 
year, and the fowls on the other half. Movable fowl 
houses are used to great advantage. By building small, 
light, and low, with strong sills made on purpose for 
runners, the houses may be moved every spring by an 
ordinary team, to the section tilled the previous sum- 
mer. The distance traveled in transferring one hun- 
dred fowl houses, from one sixty-acre lot to another, is 
one-third of a mile for each building, and back with no 
load. The amount of labor is much less than would be 
involved in hauling the manure, mixed with dry earth, 
from the buildings. The moving is accomplished sys- 
tematically ; the fowls belonging to a building being all 
moved in one flock in a large box marie on purpose, 
Fig. 12, in which they are quietly entrapped when 
attempting to leave their house in the morning, by plac- 
ing it adjoining, after which the box is darkened and 
drawn upon runners, on which it stands, to the new 
station. On arriving, they are immediately allowed to 
escape into a spare house, shaped and colored like the 
one they left, placed beforehand, when they are ready 
to commence their day as usual, the whole operation of 
removal occupying only a few minutes. Besides this 
yearly moving, each building is moved every few days 
during spring, summer, and fail, its length only. Thus 
a fresh spot is secured, and to prevent all taint and 
uncleanliness, as well as to keep the manure safe for 
next year's crops, an implement like a harrow, with 
teeth like those of a horse hoe or a cultivator, is drawn 
over the spot where it stood. The buildings are all 
moved in regular order, in the same direction, so as to 
keep the same distances apart; then back again over 
another strip of ground, so as to fertilize the whole lot 
in the course of the season. The frequent turning of 



THE COLONY PLAN". 23 

the soil not only keeps it sweet, but provides what fowls 
are so fond of — a place to scratch for insects, and roll 
and dust themselves in dry weather. The crop of weeds 
that will constantly appear in summer must be as con- 
stantly turned under ; and whatever advantage there 
may be in green crops for manure will be secured ; thus 
the enriching and pulverizing of the ground will fit it 
for large crops. It need not lie altogether fallow, either, 
for a few small spots may be sown thickly with lettuce, 
cabbages, or other plants that fowls will eat, pro- 
tected until partly grown by movable fences or hurdles 
of wire netting, after which they may be allowed to help 
themselves. Oats may be sown in strips also ; and 
whether the fowls scratch up and eat the seed, or forage 
upon the tender sprouts or the ripened grain, no mat- 
ter. It is only necessary to compare the amount of labor 
spent in spading the ground in yards, to keep it fresh, 
with this way of using team and plow, to see the supe- 
riority of the latter method. 

In poultry raising on a large scale, it is, ordinarily, 
next to impossible for the fowls to procure insect sup- 
plies to any important amount, in proportion to the 
numbers of the birds. Yet while in the colonization 
and no-fence plan, with the houses 10 to 11 rods apart 
and no crops, the insects procurable are so few as to be 
unimportant, the following modification of this method, 
where grasshoppers are very plenty, as they are in July 
and August in some parts of the United States, has 
been found to work well, to wit : Locate the buildings 
for laying stock 20 rods apart, instead of 10 rods, and 
in place of unlimited range, give each flock a long, low, 
covered run, the sides and top of which consist of wire 
netting, stretched over frames. This yard, or long run- 
way, may be 2 or 3 ft. wide, 3 ft. high, and 6 or 8 
rods long. It is important that it be built in movable 
sections, set end to end, each section being about 10 or 



24 



AN EGG FARM. 



12 ft. long, and covered at top and sides, bat open, of 
course, at the ends. The houses and runways being 
located on a fertile hayfield, an abundance of insects 
will breed in the tall grass or clover or alfalfa, and will 
be captured in the runway. 

When the fowls have access to all parts of a hayfield 
or pasture, they devour the larvae of the insects, or the 
young when so small that they do not amount to much 
as food. But under the runway plan, large numbers 
remain undisturbed till, full grown and fattened, they 
enter the trap. In some cases, tons of grasshoppers 
appear in hayfields where fowls cannot be allowed to 
run, because, in addition to other objections, the grass 




FIG. 



COOP FOU GKOWING CHICKS. 



] would be badly trampled by them and nests would be 
hidden. An occasional runway, as above described, 
penetrating the ranks of the grass like a tunnel, will 
receive, from time to time, traveling hoppers and jump- 
ers in sufficient numbers to keep the birds on the alert, 
thus affording them exercise and lessening the feed bills 
very materially. The birds can pick what green food 
they need through the meshes. As remarked, the har- 
vest of insects is specially valuable for only about two 
months in the year, and, as the houses are on runners, 
and the runways are constructed in sections, the whole 
outfit may be moved to any location desired, to stand dur- 



THE COLONY PLAN. 25 

ing the remaining ten months. The operation of the 
mower and other haying machinery will not be seriously 
interfered with in this plan, which is peculiarly adapted 
to the extensive alfalfa fields of the Great Plains region. 
If a location is preferred in a field of wheat, rye, barley, 
oats or millet, the birds may be turned loose after har- 
vest and before the Aveeds have grown tall enough to 
encourage the fowls to steal their nests, while the scat- 
tered kernels gleaned in the stubble will be quite an 
item. Alfalfa, however, is destined to become one of 
the most important crops, which will occupy millions of 
acres of the great trans-Missouri region and feed count- 
less numbers of horses, cattle, sheep and swine, and as 
grasshoppers breed in this crop in myriads, the tunnel 
plan is particularly suited to the alfalfa belt. 

The sixty acres of grain, which, as previously stated, are 
raised every year on our colony poultry farm, may have 
some of these poultry-runway movable-grasshopper traps 
located thereon. If partly grown fowls, not yet of a 
laying age, or chicks just separated from their mother, 
are placed in such runways, among growing crops, a 
very good house to be attached to the runways is shown 
in Fig. 2. It may be built four feet high from floor to 
peak of roof and four by twelve feet on the floor. Mov- 
able perches rest in slots cut in the tops of blocks eight 
inches high. The ends of the building and the two 
doors are alike, the latter being fastened down nights by 
a padlock. Several barbed fence wires are stretched on 
both sides of the building, to admit air and keep out 
thieves. Moving is clone by attaching a team to a chain 
fastened to one of the end crosspieces on which the 
floor rests. 



CHAPTER IV. 



SUPPLYING THEIR NEEDS. 



The distance once around to each station amounts to 
several miles, and the rounds must be made a number 
of times every day. The distance would be too great for 
the attendant to walk over, even if empty handed, and 
transporting grain and water without a team would be 
out of the question. A supply df water through pipes, 
connecting with each station, would be too costly, espe- 
cially as they would be idle when the land was culti- 
vated. A running stream conducted in an open ditch 
to each building would freeze in winter, make the ground 
near its banks too damp, and be in the way of plowing, 
moving buildings, and other operations ; besides, few 
lots suitable in other respects can be found where the 
slope of ground, with water supply at top, admits of the 
construction of such ditches. Each flock of fowls needs 
a pailful of water daily, taking account of the evapora- 
tion in hot weather, and the necessity of emptying the 
drinking vessels at night in winter, to prevent freezing. 
Such an amount of water could not well be carried by 
hand. By means of a cask blocked up in a compara- 
tively high position on a wagon, a strong head is 
obtained, and when going the rounds, watering, the 
operator, by the use of hose and nozzle, and a cut-off to 
slacken or increase the flow at will, and by having the 
drinking vessels stand at a convenient place, can, with- 
out leaving his seat in the wagon, not only fill the recep- 
tacles, but clean and rinse them first. 

26 



SUPPLYING THEIR NEEDS. 



27 



The most convenient wagon for our use is that some- 
times kept for moving stone at quarries, and called a 
stone cutter's dray, shown in Fig. 3. In Maine, such 
are used very commonly to carry timber about sawmills, 
and on short routes, where no stumps or stones are to 
be passed over, thus saving much lifting. 

It is desirable that the driver should ride the 10-rod 
stages between the fowl houses to lighten his labor, and 
that the team should trot to save time. But to climb 
in and out of an ordinary wagon to ride 10 rods, would 
involve more exertion than walking, Besides, the labor 
of lifting grain in and out will be much less in a low 




FIG. 3. STONE CUTTER'S DRAY. 

wagon ; the water cask may be filled and drawn from 
readily, and it is especially convenient in gathering dry 
earth. The vehicle should be built just heavy enough 
to support a barrel of water, five or six bushels of 
grain, and the driver ; or, when rigged for earth, the 
amount desired to be carried is about equal to an ordi- 
nary horse cart load. It is not intended to be used off 
the premises at all, and as there are no stones, hum- 
mocks, or the like, and no deep ruts, the body is set so 
as to clear the ground by only 8 in. (10 in. are allowed 
in the Maine wagons). The body is 12 ft. long, and 4 
ft. 2 in. wide behind, and 3 ft. wide in front, the taper- 
ing shape being necessary to give a chance to turn the 



28 AN EGG FARM. 

wagon without cramping ; and the turning is also facili- 
tated by making the axletrees so long that the wheels 
track 5 ft. 7 in., or about 4 in. wider than a common 
horse cart. The side boards are but 8 in. wide — the aim 
being to keep as near the ground as possible — and of 
2-in. plank, serving as part of the body frame. Four 
crosspieces, underneath, fastened to the side boards by 
stout 1 clamp bolts, complete the frame; and the whole 
is so constructed that no part of the body projects from 
under the side boards, the compactness of shape serving 
a useful purpose when we come to load dry earth. The 
rear axletree is made in one piece of wrought iron 2 in. 
square. The kingbolt should be made stout, and allowed 
to turn freely in the forward axletree. To carry eggs 
without breakage, a movable stand for the egg basket, 
furnished with • springs, can be set on the w^agon. A 
low sled may take the place of the wagon when the sea- 
son requires it. 

The road may be constructed quite narrow, as there 
will be no occasion to pass other teams ; and an easy 
way to raise a path sufficiently to avoid wet, is to plow a 
strip of ground a number of times over, always throwing 
the furrow toward the center, or, better yet, use a road 
grader, and the rounded ridges thus made with ditches 
Vm each side are to remain in the field permanently, and 
may be cropped with the rest of the land, if desired. 
The wheels of the wagon are made with very wide tires, 
as shown in the cut, and these must not be driven in 
the same track twice in succession, but used as rollers to 
smooth down the whole ridge, for there must be no deep 
ruts to cause the wagon body to graze the ground, or to 
interfere with the use of the bicycle, which will be found 
very convenient for some purposes. 

COLLECTING AND STORING DRY EARTH. 

To gather and store dry earth, the following plan is 
submitted as available, not only for the poultry business, 



SUPPLYING THEIR NEEDS. 



29 



and that invaluable invention, the earth closet, but for 
preparing absorbents and litter for stables and pigpens. 
The best farmers use dry earth for all their animals, not 
only for the cleanliness and health of the stock, but to 
lighten the labor of attendance, substitute a cheap litter 
for straw, and save every particle of manure. 

The spot of ground set apart for the dry earth harvest 
should be kept free from weeds and turf, and harrowed 
as shallow as possible, using a harrow with numerous 
very short teeth, or, what is the very best for the pur- 
pose, the barbed wire drag, previously described. The 
ground should not have been plowed for a year, the 
object being to pulverize it only at the surface, for in 




FIG. 4. SCRAPER FOR DRY EARTH. 



this way the top soil can be better kept from absorb- 
ing moisture from below. There is seldom a summer 
without a spell of several weeks when the soil for a 
couple of inches at the top is almost dry. Select such a 
dry spell for the work. 

The implements used are a light scraper, Pig. 4, 5 ft. 
long and 10 in. wide, and a shovel, Fig. 5, 2 ft. 3 in. 
long and 2 ft. wide. They are made lighter than simi- 
lar ones designed to work among stones and gravel, and 
both are intended to be always used in a nearly perpen- 
dicular position, and, therefore, the backs need not be 
shod for wear, as is usual with team shovels and scrapers. 



30 



AN" EGG FARM. 



They are both built of wood, edged and" bound with 
iron. The shovel is made somewhat cor cave, being- 
designed to move a pretty full load for a short distance ; 
the scraper, which only skims the surface, is made 
straight. A rope is used instead of an iron bail for draft 
attachment in the shovel to make it lighter, and for the 
same reason the iron edge and bands are thin. The 
mass moved being very dry, light, and mellow, admits 
of a rather slight construction of the implement ; and, 
as this is to be used by backing the team at every shov- 
elful, and pulling the shovel back by hand, as little 
weight as possible is desirable. The wooden rod con- 




FIG. 5. SHOVEL FOR DRY EARTH. 



necting the two crooked handles of the shovel is essen- 
tial, serving as a convenient handle in backing. Now, 
during a time of dry weather, by harrowing your ground 
with the short-toothed harrow or the barbed wire drag, 
half a dozen times on a hot day, the soil will become 
sufficiently pulverized, and also advanced one stage in dry- 
ness. The next day — watching the weather as closely as 
a haymaker — hitch your horse to the scraper, and try to 
scrape L in. deep, no more, and gather the earth into 
small windrows, extending regularly across the field, the 
operation being like raking hay. Next, make the team 
follow the windrows, and cock the dirt into heaps of a 



SUPPLYING THEIR XEEDS. 



31 



cart load each. Now, you have piles of earth nearly dry, 
but they will not grow any drier until placed so that 
moisture cannot be absorbed from below. To complete 
the drying, platforms of boards, Fig. 6, must be pro- 
vided ; these are 8 ft. square and built wedge-shaped, 
and 14 in. high at the highest part. These are now 
drawn thick end first by the team upon the planks 
which form the sides and serve as runners, and located 
one by each heap with the thin edge toward it. 

Attach the team to the shovel by a rope about 12 ft. 
long, and transfer the earth to the platforms, heaping 
the first shovelful upon the edge next the pile to cover 
it, so that it may not obstruct the shovel. The plat- 
forms should be on the north side of the heaps at the 
commencement, so as to slope toward the south, and 




FIG. 6. PLATFOBJI FOE DRYING EARTH. 



afford direct exposure to the sun. In two or three days of 
fine weather the piles will be nearly as free from moisture 
as if kiln-dried, if the earth has been well pulverized, for 
it is so loose and porous that the moisture from the bot- 
tom finds its way to the surface as fast as the latter 
dries. If the weather becomes threatening, house the 
earth without waiting for further drying, or cover with 
hay caps, according to circumstances. When ready for 
housing, draw the wagon close to the north side of the 
platform, and connect the two with a skid, 5 ft. by 14 
in., with teeth projecting over the body to hold up the 
shovel, and let the earth drop through. The same 
length of rope between the horse and shovel will be 



32 



AN EGG FARM. 



needed as when piling earth upon the platforms. Fig. 
7 shows the manner of loading. Of course, the pile in 
the wagon must be leveled off occasionally, but this is 
easily and quickly done by using a big hoe, such as is 
sold for mixing mortar. 

The flooring of the wagon, when used for carrying 
feed and water, consists of movable boards, which are 
taken out with the hind board when preparing to haul 
earth, and 1 1-2-inch planks, 5 in. wide, with planed 
edges, fitting accurately, are substituted. One end of each 
plank projects a few inches behind the body, and is so 




FIG. 7. LOADING DRY EARTH. 



narrowed, Fig. 8, that a stout stick, 2 or 3 ft. long, may 
be inserted between the planks. By prying them up, 
one at a time, the wagon is readily unloaded. There 
will not be any appreciable leakage between the planks 
in hauling 20 or 30 rods, and, to save travel, the earth 
plat should not be more than that distance from the 
storeroom at farthest. An under-ground basement in 
the granary of the establishment is the proper store- 
room, and, by driving in above, the load may be dis- 
charged through a trap door in the floor into a capacious, 
hopper-shaped bin. See Figs. 45 and 46. Underneath 



SUPPLYING THEIR NEEDS. 33 

the bin should be a space to drive in winter the wagon 
or sled, and, by pulling a slide, let the earth fall until 
a load is obtained to be carried to the stations. In this 
way, the earth is pulverized, heaped upon the drying 
platforms, loaded upon the wagon, transferred to the 
bin, and reloaded, without touching a hand shovel to it 
at all. The wagon may be loaded with the aid of the 
team shovel in less than three minutes. 

The farmer may make an earth bin, of the kind 
described, in his barn cellar under a trap in the barn 
floor. The earth, upon a tract of such mellow loam as 
is suitable for poultry, will become, by pulverizing and 
drying, reduced completely to dust. The loading and 
unloading by team power not only saves labor, but over- 
comes the difficulties inseparable from shoveling such a 
light powder, that flips in the least wind. If the 
Aveather is such that the earth gets dry enough without 
the necessity of placing it on 
platforms, like that shown in 
Fig. 6, then the dry earth 
may be taken from the piles 
to the storeroom b\ r usino- a 

•, n t n ^i FIG. 8. BOTTOM OF DRAY. 

wheel scraper instead of the 

dray. In the fall, when dry weather gives oppor- 
tunity, labor may be still further saved by scraping- 
heaps of dry. earth directly upon the winter sites of the 
fowl houses, and drawing as many of the latter as are 
rendered tenantless by the sale of the old stock upon the 
heaps, where the earth can remain sheltered awaiting 
the new flock of pullets, and no wagon is needed at all 
for the earth in that case. 

After the dry earth has been used in the houses 
through the winter, the final disposition of it must be 
made in the spring, as much with an eye to labor-saving 
as in collecting it. The fowl houses are to be pried up, 
to loosen their sills from the dust heap m which they 
3 



34 AN EGG FARM. 

are embedded, and drawn off to summer quarters. Then 
the earth, mixed with the manure is to be first moved 
with the shovel, and scattered about the immediate 
vicinity, one shovelful in a place. The scraper is next 
used to spread the heaps, and the harrow comes last, 
reversing the order of gathering. 



CHAPTER V. 

HOUSES FOR LAYERS. 

The form, proportions and fixtures of tiie fowl house, 
to secure a few eggs and chickens for home use, are of 
small consequence, so long as the proprietor has invented 
something a little different from what has ever been 
made before, and is satisfied. But business upon a large 
scale demands buildings that shall conduce in the high- 
est degree to the thrift of their inmates, and to the con- 
venience of the attendant, while the outlay, in both 
material and construction, should be the lowest possible. 
The buildings generally put up cost two or three dollars 
for each fowl provided for, while fanciers sometimes 
expend five dollars or more per head for the housing of 
their poultry. There are three classes of adult fowls nec- 
essary under our plan, which we designate as breeders, 
sitters and layers ; and the latter, which are most numer- 
ous, are housed at a cost of materials not exceeding forty 
cents for each bird, estimates being based on hemlock 
lumber at twenty-three dollars per thousand. The 
accommodations for the breeding and sitting stock are 
necessarily more expensive, and there is, in" addition, 
the cost of coops and appliances for raising chickens 
enough to replace two-thirds of the adults yearly. 

The house used at the stations, for the layers, is rep- 
resented by the larger of the two buildings shown in 
Fig. 9. It is not too large to be moved with conven- 
ience, and nothing smaller would accommodate a flock 
of fifty, the number to be kept at each station, with 
perches, nests, and sufficient ground room in stormy 

Ho 



36 



AN" EGG FARM. 



weather, and at the same time afford hight enough to 
give a circulation of air over the perches, and a proper 

pitch of roof. It is fif- 
teen feet long, eight and 
one-half feet wide, and 
four and one-half feet 
high at the peak. Let 
it be noted that any at- 
tempt to build so that 
'% the attendant may enter, 
s either makes a stooping, 
g slow job of every opera- 
t tion, from year's end to 

< year's end, or if the house 
P is carried high enough to 

allow standing upright, 

the weight interferes with 

% moving, and the lumber 

< costs too much. It is as 
« easy to reach into a build- 
* ing designed for the 
g keeper to stand outside, 
a as to reach into a handy 
ci cupboard. To give suf- 
2 ficient air, the room is as 

lofty in proportion to the 
size of the birds or their 
breathing capacity, as a 
stable twenty feet high 
would be for cattle. It 
is just about as neces- 
sary for the poulterer to 
have a roof over his head for protection in all weathers 
while at work, as it is for a farmer to make a shed over 
his land to defend his complexion from the sun while 
haying, or from the rain while transplanting cabbages. 




HOUSES FOR LAYERS. 37 

The part of the roof on the south side at A, A, A, 
and nearly all on the north, consists of hinged doors 
opening to the right or left, and overlapping when 
closed, to shed rain. When it is desired to whitewash, 
throw open all the doors, thus turning the house inside 
out, take ou± the perches and nests, all built movable, 
and there will be no nook or cranny of the woodwork 
that the brush cannot be made to reach with ease, and 
no lack of elbow room. . This arrangement of doors 
makes it convenient also to catch fowls ujoon the perches 
by night. The doors should shut as snugly as may be 
in coarse work, and the cracks unavoidably left around 
them will afford all the ventilation needed in winter, 
while in summer they may be opened more or less widely, 
according to the weather. When it is warm, yet wet, 
they may be partly opened and propped up, and boards 
put across their edges to shed rain. It is very desirable, 
under any plan for henneries, to build so that while 
moderately tight in winter, they may be thrown open 
on every side in hot weather ; for fowls are warmly clad, 
and suffer much from the heat when in buildings made, 
as is too frequently the case, only with reference to the 
cold. The doors which form the north roof project 
six inches at the ridge, to keep out rain, as there is no 
ridge cap. 

The two windows in the south roof are glazed, 
greenhouse fashion ; that is, with overlapping panes, 
that snow may slide from them readily as soon as loos- 
ened by the warmth inside. They are two feet high 
and three feet wide, and set eighteen inches from the 
peak of the roof. A strip of tin is fastened over the 
upper part of the sash, and the sides and bottom of the 
sash overlap the roof, to be rain-proof. The shutters, 
B, B, used to darken the building on certain necessary 
occasions, elsewhere referred to, are hinged to the lower 
part of the sash, and when opened, as in the illustration, 



38 AN EGG FARM. 

rest upon the roof below the windows. The side sills 
project at both ends of the building ; they are beveled, 
runner-fashion, and strengthened with iron, where holes 
are bored to attach chains ; thus the house may be drawn 
by either end, for the purposes before described. The 
sills, which receive the principal strain during moving, 
should be so well braced as to keep the whole building 
in shape. The end sills, of two-inch plank, should be 
spiked upon the top of the others, flatwise, so as not to 
touch the ground while moving, and the side sills, four 
inches square, should be of chestnut or oak, to be as 
durable as possible, for they rest on the ground during 
a good part of the year. The spruce rafters, two by 
three inches, which answer for studs and rafters both, 
should be set at such distances apart as will correspond 
with the width of the doors and windows which are 
fastened to them. 

A stout ridgepole, sawn of a' triangular shape, runs 
the length of the building underneath the rafters, and 
two sticks are fastened to this ridgepole, one five feet 
from each end, and braced upon the center of the end 
sills to give firmness ; for the covering, consisting chiefly 
of doors, does not strengthen the building, as in ordinary 
cases, where the covering is nailed to the frame. 0, C, 
are doors, each three by one foot, opening outwards and 
downwards, to give the keeper access to the nests, which 
are one foot square, and the same in depth, and so con- 
trived that the hens enter them at one side from a pas- 
sage six inches wide and one foot high, boarded at side 
and top, running the length of the row of nests, and are 
thus indulged in their liking for privacy while laying. 
The nests are tight upon the top ; the outside door 
should fit closely, and the opening admitting the fowls 
to the passage be made so small that the nests will be 
rather dark. It is found that when nests are open to 
view from the main apartment, hens will, in stormy 



HOL'SES FOE LAYERS. 39 

weather, for lack of other employment, sometimes enter 
them to scratch for food, and thus by chance break eggs 
and learn to eat them, and acquire the habit of pecking 
at and devouring eggs as fast as laid. But a darkened 
nest will deter them from entering, except to lay, for 
which purpose they prefer a dark, low corner. There is 
a row of six nests running across the building at each 
end, making twelve, which will be sufficient, as it will 
not happen that more than that number out of a flock 
will need them at once. The passages are made so that 
they may be taken out with the nests .for whitewashing. 
The end sills, of plank 18 in. wide, serve as a tight floor 
for the nests and passage. The perches, two in number, 
are 18 in. apart, and each is 18 in. from the roof, and 

2 ft. higher than the sills. Perches should be of 2 l-2x 

3 1-2 in. sawed stuff, the widest part up, with the upper 
corners rounded off a very little. From four to five aver- 
age-sized fowls will occupy 2 ft. of perch. The perches, 
being each 12 ft. long, will accommodate a flock of fifty, 
and are to be placed so as not to extend over the part 
occupied by the nests. 

The drinking vessel stands upon one of the platforms 
formed by the nests, and upon these jflatforms are also 
shallow boxes containing gravel, pounded charcoal, and 
a mixture of loam, sancl and oyster-shell lime, made into 
an easily crumbled mortar. The boxes are ten inches 
wide, and being placed next the end wall, leave a space 
eight inches wide upon the platform, for the fowls to stand 
upon. The drinking pail and gravel boxes are protected, 
by their elevation, from the dirt that would otherwise 
be thrown into them by the fowls when scratching and 
dusting, and are fronted by slats with openings six by 
two and three-quarter inches between them. An open- 
ing is made in the end wall over the pail that is just 
large enough to admit the spout of a large watering pot, 
or the nozzle of a line of hose attached to the water cask 



40 



AN EGG FARM. 



on the dray. The door, D, one foot wide, opening 
downwards, is for removing the pail and gravel boxes 
when desired, and when fastened ajar will be found 
more convenient for ventilation than the roof doors, 
when the weather is only moderately warm. Both ends 
of the building alike are furnished with doors. 

In .the summer this building may have its roof doors 
partly opened by day, as in Fig. 10, and its sills rest on 
the ground, ready for moving ; but during the severest 
weather, generally about three or three and a half 
months, of the year, this building does not stand with 
sills upon the ground, but it rests, as in Fig. 11, upon 




FIG. 10. HOUSE FOR LAYERS — SUMMER ARRANGEMENT. 

the edges of a box or bin, B, of dimensions correspond- 
ing with the center of the sills of the building, made of 
planks nine inches wide and two ; inches thick, like a 
mortar bed with no bottom, filled with dry earth. This 
should be set upon ridges thrown up by the plow or 
road grader, as previously described, and it will be 
found that, by starting with the earth dry in the fall, it 
will not absorb moisture from the ground beneath dur- 
ing winter any faster than it dries away from the sur- 
face, where the fowls keep it stirred. There need be no 
cleaning of the house while thus arranged for winter^ 



HOUSES FOB LAYERS. 



41 



but about once a month an inch or two of dry earth 
may be added. There will be no accumulations under 
the perches if the birds are not kept too profusely sup- 




plied with gravel at that season, as they should be to 
induce them to pulverize every portion of the manure 
and mix it with the dry earth, in search of the gravel 



42 



AN EGG FARM. 



which is very frequently voided. There can be no objec- 
tion to saving labor by inducing the birds to perform 
the work of scavengers, which will give them salutary 
exercise, for it is not intended that they shall be deprived 
of as much gravel as they need, but only forced to use 
the same many times over. The bin, as it may be 
called, should be strengthened with braces across the 
corners, and kept from spreading by the pressure of its 
contents by strips nailed from side to side. After the 
building has been moved in spring to a new station, the 
bin is to be pried up until the earth drops through it, 
having no bottom, and when empty it may be readily 




FIG. 12. PEIf FOR MOVING FOWLS 

hauled by team, like a sled, to the place where it is to 
be used, as will be explained, in connection with chicken 
raising. The building is hauled onto this bin in the 
fall and off in the snring, by taking the wedge-shaped 
platform for drying earth, previously figured, for a skid, 
and attaching the team to a rope twenty feet or more 
long, and using small rollers. It is a quick and not 
over troublesome operation, for it must be recollected 
that the house is not large or heavy. 

Figure 12 represents a pen to move fowls in when their 
houses are to be moved a considerable distance, to sum- 



HOUSES FOR LAYERS. 43 

mer quarters and to winter quarters. "When this pen is 
put in the place occupied by the feed room at the end of 
the passage, Figs. 9 and 11, the fowls are baited into it, 
the door, A, corresponding to an opening in the side of 
the end of the passage, C. The partitions in the pen 
separate the flock into squads, to prevent too many fowls 
huddling together and trampling each other during 
moving, at which time a canvas covering should exclude 
the light. Chains may be passed around the ends of 
the crosspiece for draft. The artist has made the 
runners turn up too much, a bevel merely, like that on 
the sills of the movable houses, being all that is necessary. 
During the winter, a low structure, 6 ft. wide, 12 
ft. long, and 1 1-2 ft. high on one side and 3 1-2 ft. on 
the other, seen at the left in Fig. 9, serves the purpose 
of a feeding room, and the rest of the year is used as a 
shelter for chickens. Its winter location is about 4 ft. 
from the larger building. E, E, E, E, represent doors, 
which overlap each other to shed rain, and when closed 
rest upon the highest or north wall, and open upwards 
and to the south, resting upon a rail attached to posts 
set in the ground. In each door is a window 3 ft. square, 
glazed, as are all the windows in the various fowl houses, 
greenhouse style. This feed house is movable, being 
furnished with planks set edgewise, with runner-shaped 
ends for side sills. Inside, a feed box, slatted on both 
sides, rests on cleats attached to the end walls, 20 in. 
from the north wall, and near the top of the room, so 
that dirt cannot be scratched into it. It has a shelf 7 
in. wide on both sides in front of the slats, on which 
the birds stand while feeding, and contains a trough 
made by nailing boards 3 in. wide to each edge of a 
board 5 in. wide. A door, E, in one end of the feed 
room, large enough to admit a fowl, communicates with 
a similar door, G, in the south side of the main build- 
ing, by a movable covered passage 5 1-2 ft. long, 1 1-4 



44 AN EGG FARM. 

ft. high, and 1 ft. wide, it being like a box with a lid, 
and but one end, and with an opening on one side. 

This passage is not shown in the cut, but appears at 
C, Fig. 11. Every night in winter, after the fowls axe at 
roost, the door, Fig. 9, should be closed, and the window 
shutters of the main building likewise. In the morning 
a mixture of vegetables, boiled and mashed, scalded 
meal, and a little meat boiled and chopped fine, is 
placed in the feed trough, and the daily rations of hard 
grain buried underneath straw, which covers the ground 
of the feeding apartment to the depth of eight or ten 
inches. The fowls are prevented, by the shutters, from 
looking on. Next open the passage, and in a minute 
the fowls w T ill all be at the feed box. After finishing 
the soft feed,- the grain, consisting in part of buckwheat 
or cracked corn or wheat screenings, so as to make as 
much work as possible to find it, will be scratched 
for at intervals all day long. A little practice will 
enable the attendant to give just enough, and have none 
left over night. Placing grain for scratching indoors is 
only for inclement weather, however. 

During a few of the coldest spells, — such as usually 
occur three or four times in the winter, and last three 
to seven days, — and during storms, fowls prefer to 
remain indoors all day ; but they should never, except in 
the morning, before feeding, be prevented from going 
out if they choose. Altogether, there are not usually 
twenty days in a year during which fowls will voluntarily 
keep inside all day. Snow should be cleared from a plat 
of ground at each station, with the aid of the team, and 
the scraper and shovel previously described, or a road 
grader. If the winter is open and mild, have a pile of 
straw out of doors with grain buried under it, using the 
broadcast seeder and hay tedder before mentioned, and 
whenever there is no snow start the broadcast seeder 
and scatter a very little finely cracked corn with the 



HOUSES FOR LAYERS. 45 

meal sifted out;, or millet seed, far and wide on portions 
of the range not provided with straw, to encourage the 
habit of running around and searching. Keep your 
fowls always on the move.- As soon as the buildings are 
moved to the new stations in spring, and the feeding 
rooms are also drawn off to be used in housing young 
chickens, the feed boxes are taken out, they merely rest- 
ing on cleats without being fastened, and carried to the 
stations, where they stand on the ground out of doors 
during summer, for use each morning, chopped vegeta- 
bles, meat or other soft feed being placed in them, out 
of sight of the birds, as before. 

The winter quarters for the laying stock are further 
represented in Fig. 11. In this cut the same building 
is shown as in Fig. 9. The passage leading to the feed 
room is shown in one of these cuts, and the feed room 
is shown in the other. In Fig. 11, certain useful con- 
trivances for windbreaks are illustrated, these being 
highly prized by fowls in cold weather. When the 
house is located for winter, the doors in the north roof 
are covered with building paper in overlapping sheets, 
tacked on slightly so that it may be removed in spring. 
Straw is laid over the paper to the depth of a foot. A 
temporary shed is made for a rod east, and the same dis- 
tance west, of the building, connecting with the roof of 
the latter, the platforms for drying earth, Fig. 6, being 
used for this purpose and supported by stout rails. By 
turning a corner, as at the post, A, east, and also west 
of the building, this shed is made to inclose three sides 
of a court which is open to the south. The gaps in the 
roof of the shed at the corners, and the cracks between 
the platforms, are covered with straw and boards. 
There is nothing that fowls love better than convenient 
nooks where they can retreat from the crowd of their 
fellows, and select their own company. Confinement 
brings not only loss of health, but the vices of feather- 



46 AN EGG FARM. 

eating and egg-eating. No system of diet will remove 
the liability of fowls that are habitually kept indoors to 
learn to pluck each other. If the room is large and the 
flock small, there may be no risk of this, but the expense 
of such quarters would be fatal to success. When fowls 
are allowed freedom they never learn to eat feathers. 
If anybody wants to keep poultry in narrow quarters 
under some highly artificial plan, with no provisions 
made for securing exercise, and prevent outdoor range 
in winter in order to promote laying, he is welcome to 
do so. But nature, if thwarted, is sure to have her 
revenge, if not in one way, then in another. Whether 
indoors or out, the birds must be busily employed every 
day, and then they will be happy and contented, and 
not learn egg-eating, feather-plucking, or other abnor- 
mal practices. Without a chance to scratch in earth or 
straw, they will be as badly off as a rich man with noth- 
ing to do. Straw is scattered under the sheds, and on 
pleasant days a few handfuls of feed are buried under it, 
using a fork ; but covering grain by hand in this way 
takes time and should be resorted to only in case of very 
bad weather. When the weather admits, a large pile is 
used for a scratching place, situated south of the feed 
room, where it can be moved by the aid of a team, as 
stated on a previous page. The arrangements for bury- 
ing grain indoors have also been already described. 
The ground is raised a few inches by plowing in the fall, 
where the sheds are to be placed. 

When the house is placed upon the dust bin, B, waste 
strips of cloth, called "headings," obtained at the 
woolen factories, are used to make the joints air-tight 
between the two. The passage leading to the feed room 
is represented at C, the feed room itself not being shown 
in the illustration, but given in Fig. 11, as was stated. 
A small opening, D, at each end of the house is for ven- 
tilation, and must never be closed. A projecting cap 



HOUSES FOR LAYERS. 4? 

over it keeps out rain, and wire cloth of one-eighth-inch 
mesh breaks the force of entering air in case of high 
winds, though ordinarily the current will be outward. 
Fresh air is admitted through the passage, C, and as it 
must enter the feed room through an outside door in 
the latter, and pass several angles before gaining admis- 
sion to the roosting room, strong drafts are avoided. 
Care must be taken, during cold spells, to partially close 
this door at night, so as to raise the temperature at the 
roost about twenty degrees higher than it is outside, but 
further than this no effort should be made to retain 
heat at the risk of impure air. Fowls that have free 
range in the daytime the year round, and roost in build- 
ings open on all sides in summer, and partially open in 
spring and fall, will not be injured by an attempt to 
strike a balance between warmth and ventilation during 
a few brief periods of extreme cold. An artificial sum- 
mer in winter, obtained by means of a furnace and hot 
water pipes, for laying stock and for chicks artificially 
reared, has its uses • in the intensive system, to be 
described further on, but is dispensed with in the exten- 
sive or colonization plan. 

The house for layers, summer arrangement, is illus- 
trated in Fig. 10. In this the feed box is seen in the 
foreground, and the doors in both roofs of the house are 
propped up a little, as in cases of extremely hot weather. 
It will be found that the birds will seek the protection 
of a building thus arranged, for shade, when the heat is 
severe, in preference to any other place. In summer 
the grain is buried under a profuse allowance of straw, 
by the use of a horserake and hay tedder, or under the 
soil, by means of the fine and short-toothed harrow or 
the barbed wire drag used in pulverizing earth for gath- 
ering, as before mentioned. 

Figure 13 represents a house for the earliest hatched 
pullets that are expected to lay more in winter than the 



48 AN EGG FARM. 

others, and are, therefore, sheltered at greater expense. 
Winter laying depends more on breed, age, feeding and 
health, than upon warm rooms. Heat is necessary to 
productiveness, but a fowl kept in full vigor and good 
appetite by exercise will be warm, where a dull, mopish 
one would shiver. It will not pay to build expensive 
fowl houses when cheap ones can be used, and the 
arrangement we are about to describe involves as much 
outlay as is advisable, in order to secure warmth, except- 
ing for some special purposes. A mound of earth, 




FIG. 13. HOUSE FOR EARLY HATCHED PULLETS. 

nearly circular, and 25 ft. broad at the narrowest point, 
is raised by scraping with the team. It should be 3 1-2 
ft. high at the center, and slope gradually to a level 
with the surface of the field. Upon this mound a cellar 
is dug 7 1-2 ft. by 14 1-2 ft., and 3 ft. deep, the bottom 
being 6 in. higher than the average of the surface beyond 
the mound. The cellar is walled substantially with 
stone, laid in cement, and floored with the latter mate- 
rial. Stations furnished with such cellars are upon a 
part of the farm where there is a gentle slope, and, 



HOUSES FOE LAYERS. 49 

wherever necessary, a tile drain is put under the founda- 
tion of the walls. 

The floor of an underground fowl house must always 
be a little higher than the adjoining field, not on account 
of drainage alone, but for ventilation. No room is fit 
to be occupied by stock that cannot be ventilated at the 
bottom. In this cellar the walled passage at A admits 
air within eight inches of the floor, which is covered 
with dry earth to that depth. The walls are topped 
with plank sills, upon the outer edges of which the run- 
ners of the itinerant building rest, calking being 
resorted to as in the previous case. It will not answer 
to house fowls in such a place unless there is plenty of 
glass above, and the south roof, therefore, contains five 
long windows, instead of two short ones, as in the other 
cases, each door being furnished with one. There is a 
shutter, B, to correspond with each window. Other- 
wise the house is of the usual pattern, and the winter 
sheds and feed room are attached to it, though omitted 
in the figure so as to show the embankment plainer. 
The house and mound have a bleak look in the illustra- 
tion, but the sheds will make the whole sheltered and 
cosy. In the cut, the embankment is represented too 
steep.- The slant should be such as to withstand heavy 
rains. The usual boarded passage, not shown in the 
cut, connects the feed room with the tunnel at A. 
There are sunny days enough in winter to keep the 
earth bed inside perfectly dry, and the air will be no 
damper than in an unglazed apartment entirely above 
ground. Straw mats of the greenhouse pattern are used 
at night upon the north roofs of all the buildings in 
winter. The amount of solar heat accumulated during 
a clear winter's day in a tight building roofed with glass 
is surprising, and this is to be retained as long as possi- 
ble, always remembering, however, to give ventilation 
its due. Summer and winter the admission of air must 
4 



50 AN EGG FARM. 

be gauged by every change of wind and weather. It is 
one of the advantages of business upon a large scale, 
that operations which it would not pay to attend to with 
one flock, may be afforded where there are many. 
Unless the mats are put on before sundown, and some- 
times on a mild day on a part of the windows at noon, 
so much glass will prove injurious because the fluctua- 
tions in temperature will be too violent. 

The buildings are kept over the cellars only in winter, 
and are drawn on and off the sills above the walls by the 
use of small rollers, and a horse attached to tackle. The 
cellars must not lie idle after the houses are moved, but 
be roofed with the platforms for drying earth, and a few 
movable greenhouse sashes, and used as a shelter for 
chickens. 



CHAPTER VI. 

HOUSES FOR BREEDERS. 

The quarters for the breeding stock combine houses 
very much like those for layers, only smaller, and yards 
made of movable fences. The houses for layers are mov- 
able, with no yards ; the houses for sitters are stationary, 
with movable yards ; and the houses and yards for 
breeders are both movable. The breeders are kept in 
fives and tens, no flock ever to exceed the latter number. 
The buildings are of two sizes, one 3 1-2 ft. wide, 4 ft. 
long, and 2 1-2 ft. high ; and the other of the same 
width and hight, and 7 1-2 ft. long. There are no run- 
ners, and the doors are few in number, though compris- 
ing the whole roof; each house, Fig. 14, is furnished 
with but one window, and but two or three nests are 
necessary, and one perch. Otherwise the houses are like 
those for layers on a reduced scale. They are designed 
to be moved by two persons, adjustable handles being- 
attached at either end for this purpose. In this way, 
being without floors, they are shifted to different parts 
of the yards, and set on ridges of earth raised by the 
plow. In winter, each stands upon the edges of a dust 
bin of 2 in. by 8 in. plank. 

The movable fences for the yards of both sitters and 
breeders are made as follows : Pickets, 2 in. wide, 1-2 
in. thick and 6 ft. long, are nailed to two rails 3 in. 
square and 12 ft. long. At both ends of every rail, 
U-shaped pieces of stout hogshead hoop iron are fast- 
ened by screws so as to form staples through which 
round posts, 7 1-2 ft. long and. 2 1-2 in. in diameter, 

51 



52 



A1ST EGG FARM. 



pointed at both ends, are thrust, and set in the ground. 
The rails in the alternate sections are at such distances 
apart that the tops of the pickets shall be in line, and the 
staples not interfere with those of the adjoining sections. 
Each post is supported, so as to resist the winds to which 
the fences expose so much surface, by a brace upon the out- 
side of the yard, Fig. L5. This brace is made by sawing 
a rail stick in two, and furnishing each end with a sta- 
ple like those upon the rails. The staples are fastened 
upon the braces in an obtuse angle, and the ends of the 
braces are beveled, the better to fit the posts. One of 
these staples passes around the post between the two 
staples of the upper rails, and through the lower one, 




FIG. 14. HOUSE FOR BREEDERS. 

which reaches to the ground, a short stake is driven 
into the earth, with its top inclining away from the 
fence, Fig. 16. The spaces between the pickets are 2 1-2 
in. wide for breeders ; for sitters, which are of a larger 
breed, 3 in. are allowed.- The pickets are nailed on the 
yard side of the rails, to prevent fowls alighting on the 
rails. The fences which divide the breeding yards are 
boarded for 2 ft. at the bottom to keep neighboring- 
cocks from fighting. This boarding is, however, not 
shown in the cut, neither is the runway shown, which, 
as will be described later, is attached to the end of each 
yard, which is at the rear in Fig. 15. Panels of wire 
netting attached to wooden frames may be used instead 



HOUSES FOR BREEDERS. 



53 



of pickets, if desired, in which case the U-shaped pieces 
of stout hoop iron should be attached to the portions of 
the frames corresponding to the top and bottom rails of 
the picket fence. The wire netting fence stands better 
than the picket fence, because it does not take so much 
wind as the latter. 

Before describing the runways for the purpose of 
exercise, which are attached to the yards, the latter 
being so very small, the absolute necessity of plenty of 
this exercise for the choice selected breeding stock will 
be enlarged upon. Dr. Holmes, when asked the age at 
which the education of a child should begin, answered : 
"A thousand years before it is born." All breeding 
animals must have exercise. Better breed strong stock 



pijjm|ii^,,,,,,,,,,.,,,JfM 




FIG. 15. YARDS AND HOUSES FOR BREEDERS. 

in the first place than putter at doctoring sick fowls 
afterwards. "When breeding ewes are confined in close 
quarters all winter, the lambs from them in the spring 
are born as limpsy as a wet rag. Said a Vermont raiser 
of high-class Merinos : "When I induce my ewes to go 
a half mile or so to a stack for their hay, and in order to 
get their grain make a journey back again, and repeat 
this round trip over and over, every day all winter, their 
lambs are born as solid and firm as a rock." Even the 
domesticated hares "or rabbits, which stand close confine- 
ment better than any other animal, give much stronger 
progeny if allowed room to exercise during the breeding 
period and previously. Mr. Thomas Wright, the great 



54 



AN" EGG FAEM. 



pigeon authority, says : "Nature designed the pigeon 
for exercise, and when it is deprived of it entirely it 
rarely lives many years and never breeds well for any 
considerable length of time," and adds: "In visiting 
lofts where the pigeons have flying privileges, we may 
expect to see young-looking old birds, but if we go where 
the aviary affords but little exercise we shall see old- 
looking young birds." 

The exercise that fowls get on a free range is worth 
more than what they find there to eat. As for exercise, 
in the ordinary poultry yard it is bet- 
ter than nothing, but it amounts to 
.but little because the yard affords no 
.vegetation and no insects for them to 
hunt. But poultry in confinement, 
even in a very small house and a very 
small yard, by means of the apparatus 
we are about to describe and which is 
attached to the yards for breeders, 
take more, exercise year out and year 
in than they get on the best range in 
the world, and they are exceedingly 
contented and happy. Their feeding 
time is all the time. It is prolonged 
through the whole day. 

Take two breeding flocks that are 
fence. exactly alike as regards breed, age, 

size, thrift, vigor, and everything else. Give both 
flocks the same shelter, and food of the same sort 
and quantity exactly. Yard one flock in the usual 
manner, providing no incentives to exercise other than 
the yard affords, it being, as is usual, as bare as the 
middle of the street. Furnish the other flock with exer- 
cising apparatus and you will get eggs for hatching pur- 
poses entirely different in character from the eggs of the 
other flock. The vitality of eggs under different cir- 




HOUSES FOR BREEDERS. 



55 




1 



cumstanees should be well understood by all who rear 
poultry. The matter is well illustrated by plant life. 
In the vegetable kingdom, there are all 
degrees of fertility. By this, we mean 
that a plant may bear some seeds that 
are plump, containing the germs of a 
future generation of plants, and which, 
if placed in the earth, will germinate 
and produce their kind, while there are 
other seeds on the same plant that are 
somewhat shriveled and shrunken and 
will not grow, although at first sight 
they do not, to any great extent, seem 
inferior to the plumpest and best speci- 
mens, aside from their clried-up appear- 
ance. At the further end of the series 
there are mere hulls without any vestige 
of meat or kernel to give promise of the 
reproduction of the species. Between the 
extremes of the empty hull and the 
plumpest grain there is a series embracing 
every gradation. It has been found by 
experiment that even if the same con- 
ditions of soil, warmth, and moisture are 
present, some grains give healthy plants 
which reach maturity, while others just 
start to grow a little and then die with- 
out making their way to the surface of 
the soil, where they might receive the 
genial rays of the sun. 

There is something very much akin to 
this in the hatching of eggs. There are 
some that are perfectly and absolutely 
barren ; there are others that are fertile 
and capable of producing vigorous chick- FIG - 1T - 
ens, and between these extremes there is every chade and 



a 



56 



AX EGG FA EM. 



grade. Very often poultry men find chickens dead in the 
shell. Some die after the egg has been sat upon eighteen, 
nineteen, or twenty days, the chicks appearing full size 
and ready to burst the shell ; some, however, die on the 
twelfth or fifteenth day, and others on the fifth or sixth 
day. In some cases, it appears as though the germinal 
speck just started in its growth and then was nipped in 
the bud. When a poultry man of an inquiring turn of 
mind breaks the eggs that have failed to hatch, he finds 
germs in every stage of growth, from the first trace of 
the development of organization up to the apparently 
perfectly formed chick, which looks as if all it had to 




FIG. 18. STKIKEK FOR FEED SHELF: 

do was to break the shell and be warmed and dried, in 
order to run around and pick up its own living. There 
are very many cases of arrested development and death 
in the shell at different stages that cannot be attributed 
to any treatment the eggs have received after they were 
put under the sitting hen or into the incubator, for other 
eggs, subjected to exactly the same influences, hatched 
and produced vigorous chickens. Now, what is the rea- 
son for all this? Surely is it not the character which 
the egg itself received from the hen that laid it or the 
sire that fertilized it, or both ? There is such a thing 
as inherited weakness, which may characterize an egg 



HOUSES FOR BREEDERS. 57 

before it is laid and give a tendency to the germ to die 
sooner or later, before it has become fully developed. 

The necessity for securing a high degree of vitality in 
the eggs intended for hatching is the more imperative 
on account of the abnormal condition of our domestic 
fowls as regards the great numbers of eggs they lay. If 
the hen steals her nest, lays there twelve or fifteen eggs and 
stops to incubate, these are invariably of high vitality. 
By robbing nests daily, we force an unnatural number 
of eggs. To counteract the tendency to weakness of 
the germs, machinery is invoked, although it might 
seem at first thought that inanimate mechanical appa- 
ratus could have no intimate connection with vital 
processes. 

To secure exercise in the yards for breeders, Fig. 15, 
runways, not shown in the cut, are attached to the rear 
of the yards. These runways are one hundred and fifty 
feet long and two and one-half feet high, built in mov- 
able sections. Extending across, over the tops of the 
fences in the breeders' yards, Fig. 15, is a continuous 
shelf, not shown in the cut, suspended over the yards 
by wires or cords, so that it may swing freely endwise. 
It is prevented by upright strips from swinging sidewise. 
A section of this long shelf is represented in Fig. 17, 
although it should be suspended by cords passing under 
the shelf in loops, instead of passing through the shelf, 
as in the cut. Grain is placed evenly the whole length 
of this long shelf and a hammer is kept handy at one 
end of the shelf. By tapping horizontally on the end, 
the whole shelf is slightly jarred, and a very little grain 
is dropped into each yard. At the end of the runways 
farthest from the houses, these runways communicate 
with another series of small yards over which is sus- 
pended another swinging shelf supplied with grain. 

To obviate the necessity of the attendant going the 
length of the runways to operate this distant shelf, a ham- 



58 AN EGG FARM. 

mer is suspended on a pivot between two posts. This ham- 
mer is raised by pulling a wire, one end of which is 
within the reach of the operator, who stands at the shelf" 
near the houses where the hand-hammer is. One end of 
a short cord is attached to the distant hammer, Fig. 18, 
passing around two sash pulleys, Fig. 19, so as to change 
the pull from perpendicular to horizontal, and the other 
end is attached to the wire above mentioned. One end 
of the shelf meets the blow of the hammer between the 
posts. After a little practice, a blow can be given each 
time with just sufficient force to jar off a little grain. If 
predatory pigeons or sparrows are feared, have wire net- 
ting attached to the shelf over the grain, a few inches 
above it. A small bell may be suspended near each shelf 
and rung after the hammer stroke, by means of a ware 
terminating at the same point that the hammer wire 
does, as above described, so as to 
be within easy reach of the attend- 
ant. Spool wire, Fig. 102, is the 
best. Fowls quickly learn the 
fig. 19. meaning of sound signals, for, as 

everybody knows, they may be called by a whistle or by 
drumming on the feed pan or by any sort of noise cus- 
tomarily repeated at feed time. The bell is not abso- 
lutely necessary, for the birds hear the hammer stroke 
and soon learn its meaning. 

The breeding fovvls and breeding yards are few in 
number, and as these fowls are very choice and their 
perfect thrift is of the utmost importance, the feed 
shelves are to be jarred quite frequently during the day, 
and, therefore, the yards should be located near the feed 
storehouse, or the place where the eggs are put after 
gathering, or at whatever point the attendant will pass, 
or be at, the most frequently during the day. Or the 
hammers for both the shelves may be pivoted and have 
cords and wires attached, these last being extended to 




HOUSES FOR BREEDERS. 



59 



the watchman's house, Fig. 20, or storeroom, or other 
permanent building, and operated by clockwork every 
twenty minutes. Of course, bell wires may also be 
pulled by the clockwork, but this will not be found 
worth while ; for, as has been said, the sound of the 
hammer stroke will answer quite well as a call, although 
when a clock is not employed, calls are a pretty good 
thing, since they can be so readily put up and operated. 
Under each shelf, a pile of straw should be kept to 
make work for the birds in addition to the running- 
back and forth which the feed dropping induces. One 




FIG. 20. OFFICE AND WATCH HOUSE. 

great advantage of the long runs is that the birds will 
make frequent trips of their own accord to see what 
there is good to eat at the other end, the remembrance 
of a series of feasts being always vivid in their minds. 
Even if bells, hammers and shelves are operated but 
once every hour or two, or only three or four times 
daily, the fowls will keep running back and forth fre- 
quently. The difference between a given amount of 
ground space in a yard of a square form and in one long 
and narrow, as regards the exercise conferred respec- 



60 AN EGG FARM. 

tively, is simply enormous. In a square yard, or in one 
which is, say, twice or thrice as long as wide, the birds 
will not ramble much. They find that there is nothing 
to be gained and soon become discouraged and mope in 
complete listlessness. If it were not for the great 
expense of building material and the difficulty of moving 
so much fence, the yards could be made 10 or 12 ft. 
wide and 100 or 200 ft. long, instead of having runways. 
But the low, covered hurdles are so handy and can be 
shifted so quickly, to sweeten the ground by plow and 
harrow every month, in addition to the annual moving 
to another field entirely, that their invention was a great 
boon conferred on the poulterer. The importance of 
sweet, fresh earth in yards and runways cannot be too 
strongly insisted upon. The poultry man's nose and 
inhaling organs are 5 ft. or so from the ground, and he 
does not notice a taint in the soil, which would be very 
perceptible were he breathing as near the ground as the 
fowls are. 

Were it not for the careful breeding, by selection and 
pedigree, we would not yard the breeding birds at all. 
The disadvantage of the yards and runways such as 
have been described, is that the straw on which the grain 
is dropped cannot be stirred by team and hay tedder and 
horserake. But, since the breeders' yards are few, the 
time taken in stirring the litter is unimportant. It will 
be found that the attendant's boots are handier than a 
fork, if the straw is comparatively new and unbroken, 
for he can easily kick it loose several times daily, when 
it becomes compacted under the feet of the fowls. The 
ideal way is to not only drop grain upon straw by 
mechanical apparatus, but to stir the straw also and 
mix straw and grain together by machinery. This can 
be done to great advantage under the intensive system, 
to be described further on, but as it is desired to have 
the houses and yards for the breeding birds movable, for 



HOUSES FOR BREEDERS. 61 

putting the land in crop every other year, the shelves 
and hammers, which are easily set up with or without 
bells, are all the apparatus with which we would burden 
the moving. In this connection, it may be observed that 
the advantage of the low down form of wagon for moving 
fences and hurdles to a distant spot annually is very 
apparent 



CHAPTER VIT. 

HOUSES FOR SITTERS. 

The stock used for hatching purposes is managed dif- 
ferently from the layers, and needs different accommo- 
dations. The houses for sitters, Fig. 21, are near the 
center of the farm, where the granary and cook room 
are located. They accommodate 100 fowls each, are not 
movable, and are set upon a stone or brick underpinning, 
10 in. high. They are 10 ft. 4 in. from the ground to 
the peak, and 20 ft. long by way of the ridge, and 16 ft. 
wide. The roofs are shingled, and the ends of the 
buildings covered with boards nailed upright and bat- 
tened. About one-third of the roof towards the south 
is glazed, the windows being partially darkened as warm 
weather approaches. The form of these houses, like 
that of all in the establishment, with eaves near the 
ground, is adapted to afford as much ground room as 
possible in proportion to the lumber used. The roof of 
each house is crossed outside by a picket fence running 
at right angles with the ridge. This fence forms one 
side of the yard with which each house is furnished, 
and though it extends only 18 in. above the ridge of the 
building, the sitters, not being of a high-flying breed, 
will not get over it. By this arrangement, exit is 
afforded to the fowls and to their keeper at either end 
of the building, into a yard which is located at either 
end on alternate years. The two ends of the house, one 
fronting east and the other west, are both provided 
exactly alike with doors and windows. The large doors 
are t> 1-2x3 ft,, opening outwards, and the smaller ones 

6? 



HOUSES FOR SITTERS. 



63 



attached to them are 7x9 in. The windows are 2x3 ft., 
and are hinged, opening upwards for ventilation. In 
hot weather the windows and dooro in both ends of the 
building are opened wide, and to prevent the fowls 
escaping at the end where there is no yard, wire netting 
is fastened across the window casings inside, and there 
is an inside door of the same material hung to the stud, 
to which the outside door is hinged. 

Figure 22 gives an interior view of the house. There 
are four perches,, each 15 ft. long, and of the width and 




FIG. 21. HOUSE FOR SITTERS. 



thickness of those for layers. They are placed 18 in. 
higher than the top of the underpinning, those nearest 
the nests being 3 1-2 ft., and those nearest the eaves 
5 1-4 ft. from the center of the building. A space 2 1-2 
ft. wide at each end of the room is left unoccupied by 
the perches. Three tiers of nests occupy the center of 
the room, each tier consisting of two rows placed back 
to back, and running in the same direction as the 



64 



AN EGG FARM. 



perches. There are 12 nests in each row, or 72 in all, 
and as each nest is 1 ft. square and 1 ft. high, they 
occupy 12 ft. in length. This allows a space of 4 ft. at 
each end of the building between the nests and the 
doors, and as the latter are planned of a sufficient width 
to admit a wheelbarrow, and the perches are made so as 
to be easily moved, opportunity is afforded to wheel in 
or out the dry earth which fills the bottom of the room 
halfway up to the top of the underpinning. There are 
nests enough so that eighteen hens may be set at once, 
and leave room for fowls that are laying. The nests are 




FIG. 22. HOUSE FOR SITTERS— INTERIOR. 

placed so that the bottom of the lower ones are 6 in. 
higher than the perches, this bight enabling attendant 
to avoid stooping, as there is much work to be done 
about the nests of sitting hens; while they are not so 
high as to prevent the fowls reaching them by flying 
upon the nearest perch, or as to render a ladder neces- 
sary. The nests are made so that the hens enter them 
at the front, where a 3 in. strip set edgewise prevents 
the eggs from tumbling out. An alighting board pro- 
jects 2 1-2 in. in front of each row of nests. 



HOUSES FOR SITTERS. 65 

The partitions at the backs of the nests are made of 
wire netting, one-inch mesh, to keep out rats, "those at 
the sides of the same and of a two-inch wire netting, 
alter nately, for purposes described in another place. 
In this way a circulation of air is allowed for the 
health of the sitters. Sufficient attention is not gener- 
ally given to this point. Fowls in a state of nature 
being accustomed to scratch holes in the ground under 
bushes, to form their nests and incubate where there is 
plenty of air, pant and show distress in hot weather 
when forced to occupy close boxes. Large doors of 
wire netting, two-inch mesh, not shown in the illustra- 
tion, prevent the fowls roosting at the entrance to the 
nests at night. These doors are closed after gathering 
the eggs towards evening, and opened again the first 
thing in the morning, and are made in two parts, fold- 
ing together, so that there may be room for them over- 
head, when raised. A piece of rat-proof netting is 
placed in front of a nest occupied by a hen engaged in 
hatching, and fastened by buttons, to keep out laying 
fowls by day and rats by night. To keep the fowls from 
using the upper part of the room as a roosting place, 
wire netting or lathwork, a part of which is shown in 
the figure, extends from the top of the upper nests to 
the roof. Underneath the lower tier of nests is placed 
a feed box, made like those with which the houses for 
layers are furnished, and others of the same construction 
should be placed on the ground at the ends of the 
perches, and at right angles with the latter. Five 
houses for sitters, each with its yard, will be required 
for an establishment of the size we are describing. The 
arrangement of the yards is shown by Fig. 23. The 
fence, A B, is made like the buildings, C, non-movable. 
The fences on the remaining three sides of the yards are 
moved yearly. Suppose that last year the yards were 
located at E ; then this year they are at D, and E is 
5 , . 



66 



AN EGG FARM. 



devoted to crops. A strip of ground is left un tilled near 
the doors of the buildings for a wagon path. To keep 
the yards free from taint and afford scratching ground, 
a part of each is plowed occasionally during the season 
when they are occupied by the fowls. All the fences 
running east and west, as ~F B, are composed of gates, 
so that by opening, for instance, at F G, through the 
whole range of yards, a strip of each may be plowed, 
and in a few days the operation may be repeated at 
another part of the yards. 

To these yards, movable runways, made in sections, 
are annexed, not shown in the ground plan, Fig. 23, 



B 



D 



® 



D 



■0- 



D 



I' 



E 



-0— 



n 



.0-aJ 



E 



PLAN OF YARDS FOR SITTERS. 



and these runways extend to distant yards, where there 
are feed shelves, hammers, and so on, exactly like those 
in the yards for breeders, previously described. The 
paramount consideration is the welfare of the sitters 
when engaged in incubation. For the management of 
sitters in the buildings just described, see Chapter XIV. 

HATCHING BY WHOLESALE. 

There is a better plan than the one just described for 
houses and nests for sitting hens in the southwest, where 
the poultry business is destined, for reasons briefly stated 



HOUSES FOR SITTERS. 67 

in the introduction, and which will he more fully given 
further on, to reach a greater development than in any 
other part of the United States or of the world. 

Numerous unsatisfactory methods of managing sitters 
on a large scale have been tried. The plan of confining 
each in a small, separate pen, like that shown in Fig. 24, 
or some modification thereof, has been weighed in the 
balance and found wanting. It may be occasionally 
tried to advantage by the villager, who keeps only a 
dozen fowls or so and has only a very limited space for 
them, but on a large scale this separate confinement 
plan will not do at all, because the sitter does not suffi- 
ciently air her plumage, nest and eggs, and what is of 
still more importance, her bowels get out of order for 
lack of exercise, resulting in foul nests. This trouble 
does not always occur, it is true, but it will happen in a 
sufficiently large proportion of cases to be very objec- 
tionable indeed. No person can long endure the sight 
of a lot of sitting hens, some badly out of condition, and 
none just right, if he has a keen sense of what is thrift. 
"We mean that instinctive demand that his charges shall 
be in the pink of condition, which distinguishes the best 
keepers in all departments of livestock raising, and with- 
out which nobody can make a good poultry man anyhow. 
Nature has provided that the sitter shall bustle around 
at a great rate, and race up and down the range as if 
determined to crowd in a half hour the exertion she 
spread over a whole day when a laying fowl. If denied 
this running exercise, sitters are liable to -be afflicted 
with constipation, alternating with the other extreme, 
resulting in nests of unspeakable filthiness. Study 
nature, and you will find that a sitter allowed a free 
range never fouls her nest, and nobody has to bring a 
basin of warm water to wash her eggs. Any system of 
managing sitters in great numbers that calls for the 
washing of eggs and renovating filthy nests, cannot com- 



bS AN" EGG FARM. 

pete with incubators. There is another thing about the 
sitting hen and her stolen nest. The delights of liberty 
keep her from returning to her nest prematurely. The 
eggs, and the nest itself, are thoroughly aired and puri- 
fied from exhalations, and as the sitter keeps her feath- 
ers bristled nearly all the time, her plumage likewise 
undergoes as thorough a treatment as did your mother's 
feather bed when she used to give it a good sunning. 
The nest and the feathers upon the eggs are sweet in 
the case we have supposed, but they never are perfectly 
sweet and fresh when sitters are individually confined in 
small, separate pens in rows or tiers, an abomination in 
the sight of men and angels. Kunning and flying, 
rather than scratching, are demanded, although all are 
employed. There is an intimate relation between exer- 
cise of the legs and normal action of the bowels, this 
being true not only with fowls, but with all other spe- 
cies of animals which have locomotion and digestion, 
human kind included. 

Another objection to separate rooms is, that if feed is 
placed so that the hen can leave her nest to eat at pleas- 
ure, rats are baited to the spot, or if each room is made 
rat-proof, it will be too expensive. To feed and water 
individual birds in separate apartments takes much 
time, and if several are placed in one room, they must 
be looked to, or two will take to the same nest. But if 
surveillance is attempted, it will be handier to carry it 
out by placing many in a large room. 

Incubator manufacturers have fattened on the short- 
comings of sitting hens under improper management, 
but a little ingenuity will achieve a success that will 
vindicate the methods of mother nature. Art is at its 
best not when supplanting nature's ways, but when 
assisting them to have free scope and be glorified. If a 
one-hundredth part of the mechanical ingenuity which 
has been lavished on incubators during the last thirty 



HOUSES FOR SITTERS. 69 

years had been spent on contriving good methods of 
managing sitting hens, in place of the separate confine- 
ment plan, there are thousands of persons all over the 
United States, who have failed in attempts at artificial 
incubation, who might have followed nature's method 
with success. Incubators have their uses, but they are 
only for the winter or to supplement sitters. A given 
number of eggs can be attended to under Plymouth 
Eock sitting hens, and a larger per cent of strong, 
healthy chickens hatched out than by the use of incu- 
bators, and with less labor of the attendant, the grain 
for the birds costing less than the oil for the machines, 
and the whole equipment of buildings, nests, yards, 
runways and fixings, all told, costing decidedly less than 
incubators of the same egg capacity and the cellars to 
contain them. The incubator idea has been overworked, 
and the method of nature underrated. The patent office 
contains hundreds of inventions for regulating heat in 
incubators, over which persevering mechanics have 
racked their brains, but the animal economy in a state 
of health, either in case of man or the sitting fowl, reg- 
ulates heat to a marvelous nicety that puts all mechan- 
ical devices to shame. Summer or winter, awake or 
asleep, whether we are sitting still or at violent exercise, 
though we may feel cold or hot at times, yet the ther- 
mometer shows that the temperature of our bodies is 
essentially invariable, cases of severe sickness excepted. 
Then look at the wonders of the plumage of a fowl. A 
feather is one of the masterpieces of nature. Combining 
strength, elasticity and lightness, it is at the same time 
a good non-conductor of heat, it affords the most perfect 
ventilation, and, like the fur of animals, it both sheds 
rain and repels dirt. A mole burrows in the dirt and 
remains as clean as a coin fresh from the mint. It is 
hard to tell which is the most marvelous production of 
nature, an egg or a feather. 



70 AX EGG FARM. 

In undertaking to compete with artificial incubation 
and rearing and to distance the artificial methods, any 
and every kind of sitters must not be employed. The 
Asiatic breeds give a gentle disposition and unrivalled 
persistence, but the feathers on their legs are in the way. 
The most gentle and Brahma-like Plymouth Eocks of 
large size, selected for motherliness and for freedom 
from the nervous activity and liability to scare and fret 
that some of the smaller breeds possess, are just the 
thing. To all intents and purposes, they are Light 
Brahmas, with their excessive size and the black of the 
plumage and the leg and toe feathering bred out, and 
length of wing and a certain lightness of movement, the 
reverse of the Brahma clumsiness and awkwardness, 
bred in. A hen of the improved breed of sitters can 
cover from sixteen to twenty eggs, according to the 
season. 

Some persons have objected to the cost of the feed for 
sitting hens while they are incubating. It is not lost. 
They need a rest from laying, anyhow, and lay the bet- 
ter for it. If they do not lay at one time of the year, 
they will make up for it at another. While at a resting 
spell they would have to be fed, whether sitting or not, 
but the expense of heating incubators is a dead weight. 
Among other advantages of the natural system, an 
important one is that it does not demand so high priced 
a man as the artificial system does. The first is easy, 
the last is comparatively difficult and keeps the attend- 
ant on a rack and strain more or less, that must be paid 
for; or if he is a master of the art and so has little 
anxiety, then the time he spent in becoming a master of 
the art must be paid for. But, if you have the proper 
conveniences, calm as a May morning you can attend 
sitters, not by the hundreds, but by the thousands, with 
not a care in the world. Their temperature will always 
be correct. 



HOUSES FOR SITTEKS. 71 

It is essential to have complete control of the sitters 
and of their nests, and the attendance at every stage 
must be performed well, cpiickly and with ease. No 
operation must be awkward or at a disadvantage, if nat- 
ural hatching on a large scale is to be made to beat 
hatching by machine. The maxim must be kept in 
mind, that whenever a thing is to be repeated hundreds 
of times and often, a saving of a second, and also avoid- 
ing a cramped or laborious position of the worker, is of 
the utmost importance in lessening expense. 

Inconvenience costs money ; not only is wear of mus- 
cles to be saved, but wear and tear of brain and patience. 
It takes too much mental steam to run incubators and 
brooders, as compared with sitters and brooding hens. 
Nature has, as we have said, regulated the heat of the 
latter perfectly, and made most exquisite provisions for 
ventilation and moisture — natural provisions not prop- 
erly appreciated by poultry men during the incubator 
craze. Incubators are at their best in the winter broiler 
business, and as adjuncts to early spring hatching under 
hens in sections of country where winter is prone to lin- 
ger in the lap of spring. But the millions of tons of 
poultry to be needed in the great future will be raised, 
dressed and shipped, both with and without cold stor- 
age, Avhere the winters are so short and mild as to be 
reckoned with but slightly, — raised just a little to the 
south of where the bulk of the cattle, sheep and swine 
are now fattened. Just where the great district of the 
cheapest grain in the world touches another district 
where mild winters prevail, which are of much greater 
importance for poultry than for beef, pork and mutton 
production, and where natural incubation is at its best. 

A man can work more hours each clay, and have 
greater peace of mind and live longer on earth, if he 
attends to natural incubation and rearing when he has 
the very best conveniences for it, as compared with the 



72 AN EGG FARM. 

person running the very best incubators and brooders in 
the world under the mental tension and watchfulness 
their successful use implies. Tending sitters in great 
numbers, unless with conveniences, is, however, an 
abomination. Any plan of managing them that places 
the operator at the mercy of their whims and cranks, 
and the liability of their lice and uncleanliness, makes 
his task irksome in the extreme, and costs in dollars and 
cents. They have certain traits and habits, however, 
which we can rely ujion and turn to our advantage. 
Nature has placed within our reach vital machinery of 
such wonderful precision that nothing man can make 
will ever rival it. 

Hatch chicks artificially and rear them in brooders, 
where location demands, and market them in ninety 
days from the shell, and besides, use the incubators, if 
you choose, to supplement sitters, but never rear a bird 
to keep to adult age for a sitter, or to exhibit, or for a 
breeder, except under a good, motherly hen. The egg 
must, in the first place, be laid by a fowl kept under 
sanitary conditions that were perfect, and during incu- 
bation be surrounded by air much better and purer than 
that in incubators averages; and then, while the chicks 
are getting their growth, they should never see a fence, 
but have the use of as much of the United States as 
they choose to travel over. Pullets thus hatched and 
reared, and from an ancestry thus hatched and reared 
for several generations, will have constitutions that will 
stand forcing (to get eggs for food purposes only), and 
can be put through the severest ordeal of rich and stim- 
ulating diet for a year after completing their growth, 
when they should be killed and their places given to 
new recruits. The colt reared in the green pastures and 
beside the still waters, and from a country-bred sire and 
dam, you can take at its maturity to toil in the city 
streets. You are trading on the vitality stored up by 



HOUSES FOR SITTERS. 73 

the animal in its youth, and on that which was accumu- 
lated by dam and sire and great-great-grandsire. But, 
on the other hand, the city would be a poor place in 
which to raise colts. 

The successful business men of our large towns were 
nearly all country reared and descended from country 
bred ancestry. They go to the city with a full head of 
vitality it has taken generations to accumulate. The 
artificial life dissipates vitality, it does not accumulate 
it, although it may sometimes accumulate money. No 
large city perpetuates its own number of inhabitants. 
It would become depopulated were it not for recruits 
from the country. The blooded fowls, or their eggs for 
hatching, bought and sold and disseminated by millions 
all over the world, would leave descendants more plenty 
than blackberries, were it not for the fact that not only 
are incubators and brooders used considerably, but both 
sellers and buyers are prone to stive the highly prized 
birds up in such close quarters, and subject them to so 
many other unnatural conditions, that they peter out 
after awhile. Trace the history of dozens of importa- 
tions of choice poultry brought into your neighborhood, 
good reader, within your remembrance. Ask what has 
become of them. The answer will be, in a large propor- 
tion of cases, "they all ran out." 



CHAPTER V1I1. 

FOR SITTERS IN MILD ' CLIMATES. 

According to the best method of managing sitters in 
the region of mild winters, from which the bulk of poul- 
try products is to come eventually, the house for sitters 
needs no glazing and no siding, or very little siding, 
but should have a good, tight, shingled roof to keep off 
rain. In the belt of country where the trainloads and 
shiploads of poultry, necessary to supply in the future 
not a hundred millions, but hundreds of millions, of our 
own people, and foreign lands as well, can be raised 
most profitably, the climate permits poultry to roost in 
trees the year round and do quite well, as has been 
demonstrated for a century. 

In such a climate, with an enormous tract of prairie 
joining it on the north, affording a supply incalculable 
in quantity of the cheapest •grain on earth, the cost of 
producing poultry products is at the very minimum, and 
even with cost of transportation added, it is still at the 
minimum. In the redistribution of industries, com- 
pelled by the laws of business competition — laws as irre- 
sistible as the attraction of gravitation — a commodity 
will always be produced, in the long run, at exactly the 
most advantageous point. Therefore, at Kansas City, 
or not more than a hundred or a few hundred miles 
away, will be shipped yearly thousands of tons of poul- 
try, alive or dressed, refrigerated, frozen, or canned. 

The buildings in Arkansas and Oklahoma will need 
next to no siding at all, but in southern Kansas there 
should be hinged or folding sides to be let down in win- 

74 



FOR SITTERS IN MILD CLIMATES. 75 

ter. To protect against heat in our model house for 
sitters at the southwest, a tight, level floor should 
extend from plate to plate, making an air chamber of 
all the space in the building above the posts. This floor 
may consist of matched stuff or of straight edged boards, 
reinforced by building paper. The roof gets hot and 
this air chamber protects the fowls, and their attendant 
also. A shutter of liberal dimensions, in each gable 
near the peak, governed by cords, must be kept open in 
summer, to. permit the heated air to escape, but it must 
not be allowed to escape in winter, as it serves a useful 
purpose during the cool nights. 

The length of the building is 155 ft., 144 ft. of which 
are in the hatching room. The width is 11 1-2 ft., 
width of central alley, 2 1-2 ft. Measurements in the 
direction across the alley arc as follows : Nest, 1 1-3 ft.; 
treadle, 12-3 ft.; feeding space, 11-2 ft. The roof is 
double, that is, it slants clown from the ridge in two 
directions. An alley for the attendant is dug in the 
ground, lengthwise of the building, in the center, 2 1-2 
ft. deep and stoned or bricked at the sides. The build- 
ing is double, there being nests, treadles, and a feed 
space each side of the alley. Immediately adjoining the 
alley on each side is a row of nests at the bottom of the 
fowl house proper, thus they will be 2 1-2 ft. above where 
the attendant stands. The place where work is to be 
done should be of this convenient hight, for the same 
reason that a store counter or a work bench stands above 
the floor. It Avas a big mistake to locate nests, brooders, 
etc., on a level with the poultry keeper's feet, as has been 
done all over the United States. 

A car runs the w r hole length of the building on a rail- 
road in the alley, twenty inches above the bottom of the 
alley, the rails being held by supports fixed in the walls. 
As ease and dispatch in certain portions of the work 
depend on this transportation feature, the rails and the 



76 



AN EGG FARM. 



car must be of the best, so that the latter may be moved 
at a touch. A wheelbarrow is sometimes used in a poul- 
try house alley, but it is a nuisance, because, among 
other objections, two hands are used in propelling it, 
but a car can be pushed by one hand, or by the attend- 
ant's body, leaving both his hands free. The best way 
is as good as any other way. The car is provided with 
conveniences the most handy that can possibly be con- 
trived for transporting the fresh, moist earth used in the 
nests of sitters, also eggs and, on occasion, mother hens 
with their broods of newly hatched chicks. 

The laying hens, destined for sitting when they 
become broody, must occupy the same building as those 




FIG. 24. COOP FOR SINGLE SITTER. 

actually sitting, because it takes time to move sitters 
from place to place. A sitter incubates in the same 
nest she used while laying. To keep laying birds from 
access to nests of sitters a trap system is employed, each 
sitter shutting herself in. In other words, when the 
sitter is off her nest the trap is set, and when she goes 
on it is sprung and she is a prisoner. The construction 
of these traps will be described in detail, because they 
are the controlling feature of the system of management, 
with reference to which all the rest is contrived. By 
but little more than a simple turn of the wrist, the 
attendant can perform many of the most important 



FOR SITTERS IN MILD CLIMATES. 



77 



operations about the nests, from either end of a building 
one hundred and fifty feet long, without going down 
the alley. 

Figure 25 shows the operation of a treadle, T, at the bot- 
tom of one of the separate passages, leading to a separate 
nest, this treadle being operated by the weight of the 
hen, which releases a figure 4 catch and closes the pas- 
sage door, thus confining her and shutting laying fowls 
out. In this cut, the sides and top of the nest and of 








FIG. 25. APPARATUS FOR SITTERS. 



the passage leading to the nest, and other things in the 
vicinity are omitted ; the purpose being merely to show 
how the hen shuts herself in. The treadle, T, eleven 
inches wide, or just enough scant to play freely in an 
eleven-inch space, and twenty inches long, forms the 
bottom of the passage, which is large enough to admit a 
fowl and allow her access to the nest, b. In this cut, an 
edge view is given of the door, h 1 , pivoted at n, and raised 
by the cord, a}, which passes over the pulley, p. 



78 AN EGG FARM. 

Attached to the door is the door lever, h, this lever 
being held down by a figure 4 catch. This we call the 
first position of the door. The hen enters on the treadle 
at T and walks toward the nest at b. The treadle, being- 
moved downward by her weight, turns on the pivot, v v, 
which has bearings on the side of the passage not shown 
in this cut. To the treadle is attached a rod, jointed at 
t and pivoted at e and at x. When x moves downward, 
as indicated by the arrow, the motions of the other parts 



FIG. 26. APPARATUS FOE SITTERS. 

are also in the directions of the arrows, t going down- 
ward and toward the right and the figure 4 toward the 
left, releasing the door lever, and causing the door, h 1 , 
to fall by its own weight and close the passage. When 
the door is shut, it is in the second position, and it 
stands, not perpendicularly, but on a slant, as shown at 
h 2 , Fig. 26. In this cut, the top and one side of the 
passage and nest are shown, which, of course, hide the 



FOR SITTERS IX MILD CLIMATES. 79 

treadle rod, but Fig. 26, being designed only to show the 
working, is not an exact representation of the nest and 
the passage to the nest, there being in reality a liberal 
employment of wirework in top and sides of these for 
the sake of air. 

Now, as there are 144 nests in a horizontal row or 
tier, each with its passage, door, treadle, and other 
parts; to set all these traps by hand, in other words, to 
go through the alley and depress each door-bar singly to 
make each engage with its catch, would take too much 
time. A trap-setter must be employed to set them all 
at once, or as many as are in use for hatching purposes. 
An iron shaft, I, in Fig. 25, and also I in Fig. 26, con- 
sisting of a common 3-4 in. water pipe, extends the 
whole length of the row of nests, a transverse section of 
this shaft being shown also at I, Fig. 29. The shaft has 
bearings made by driving staples into a 2x6 stick, 
attached immovably to the building. To the shaft, at 
intervals of 1 ft., corresponding to the width of the 
nests, are attached arms of large wire, each 11 in. long, 
with a loop or an eye in the end farthest from the shaft, 
as at 1 in Fig. 25, to which the cord, a 1 , is fastened, a 
small snap hook being tied permanently to the cord and 
snapped into the eye. This cord passes over the pulley, 
p, and is fastened to the door, li. It will be readily seen 
that when the shaft, I, has been turned, by means of a 
lever at either end of the building, operated by the atten- 
dant, so as to throw the arm to the point 1, as shown in 
Fig. 25, the door is raised to the first position (and, of 
course, all the doors in the tier, attached by cords in the 
same way, are brought to the first position) and all the 
sitters are able to enter the nests, their daily run out of 
doors being finished. Having set all the traps, the shaft 
is turned to bring the arm to the point 2, so that the 
cords may be slack, permitting each hen to drop her 
own door. 



80 AN EGG FARM. 

The doorway to the door is narrowed by tacking on 
strips of wood, according to the average size of the birds, 
so that two hens cannot enter abreast. One or two split 
shot, such as are sold to anglers for sinkers, are attached 
to the cord near the center, so as to take up the slack 
and keep the cord slightly taut over the pulley, p, while 
waiting for the hen to drop her door. Treadles should 
be made of three-eighths or one-half inch boards, so as 
to be quite light, and hung so that the end nearest the 
door will be merely heavy enough to overcome the fric- 
tion of its pivots and of the joint and pivot of the rod, 
so as to keep the door end of the treadle down at all 
times, excepting when the trap is being either set or 
sprung. 

When, the next day toward night, it is desired to open 
all the doors to liberate the sitters, the shaft, I, is turned 
so as to move the arms to the point 3 and the doors to 
the point h 3 , called the third position ; they being lifted 
not quite as high as the first position, but high enough 
to let the birds pass out. When the sitters are all out, 
turn the shaft back to 2, to put the doors in the second 
position,- — that is, they will be closed so that none of the 
birds can return to their nests prematurely ; for over- 
zealous sitters are prone to air the eggs too little, and 
to not spend sufficient time in dusting themselves, exer- 
cising, eating and drinking. After an interval of five 
or ten minutes or an hour or more, according to the 
weather, the trap-setter, 1, is again employed as pre- 
viously described, to bring the door bars into the keep- 
ing of the figure 4's, so that the doors will be in -the first 
position. 

Now there are one hundred and forty-four nests in one 
row and only one hundred or less of these are to be used 
at one time by sitters, leaving forty-four or more to be 
used by the laying fowls, which occupy the same build- 
ing. When a nest is no longer needed for a sitter, and 



FOR SITTERS IN MILD CLIMATES. ,. 81 

is renovated and jirepared for the use of the layers, the 
snap hook is detached from the eye and attached 
to a similar eye at the end of an arm belonging to a 
shaft, m, which is the duplicate of the shaft I, and which 
operates as the latter does, only it is never used to bring 
doors to the first position. The shaft, m, is to put the 
doors leading to layers' nests into the second position 
(closed) before liberating the sitters, this precaution 
being necessary to prevent sitters from blundering into 
the nests of layers. As before remarked, the sitters are 
let out toward night, the layers having finished business 
for the day. 

The distances the shafts m and / are, respectively, 
from the point where the cord is attached to the door, 
li, must have careful attention ; m can be the nearest to 
the alley and I the highest, and both must be so placed 
that the cord will exactly reach from arm 2, on both 
shafts, to the door, when these arms are at the second 
position. Then the first and third positions will take 
care of themselves, and the length of cord having been 
once fixed upon need never be changed. The cords are 
small and may be the best quality cotton shoe string, or 
other stout, non-stretchable material. Bore a three- 
sixteenth inch hole, slantingwise, through h, in which 
insert a homemade affair like a violin peg to attach the 
cord to, so that by turning the peg you can wind or 
unwind the cord and it may be readily brought to the 
exact length necessary to conrpletely close the doors and 
also operate the figure 4's with precision. 

When you arrive on the scene, the sitters' doors are 
supposed to be at the second position (closed) and the 
layers' doors at third position (nearly full open). The 
order then proceeds as follows : Layers' doors, you throw 
to second position (closed) ; sitters' doors, immediately 
to third position (nearly full open) ; after a short inter- 
val, sitters' second position (closed) : after a longer 
6 



82 



Al* EGG FARM. 



(»«<«<» X**.&X. K.A *** 



i *V «.**,<< 



I'*/ 



:*\: 



I* '•■ 



A; 




FOK SITTERS IX MILD CLIMATES. 



83 



interval, sitters' first position (wide open and traps set). 
Finally, after a still longer interval, the layers' nests to 
third position (nearly full open) and then everything to 
remain till the next afternoon. The whole program is 
elsewhere more fully described. 

We now invite attention to Fig. 27, which is a ground 
plan of the hatching house with its yards attached; it 
being an equivalent of an incubator cellar and an equip- 
ment of 10 incubators of 300 egg capacity each, though 




FIG. 28. SECTION OF COVERED YARD. 

it costs much less and turns out more and better chicles, 
with more certainty and less work. Y, I" represent large 
yards and y, y, y, y small yards. The building is 11 1-2 
ft. wide and 155 ft. long, or 144 ft. exclusive of the 
rooms, m, at the ends, but the length is very materially 
reduced in the cut to give space to show details plainly. 
The small yards, 5 1-2 ft. wide, are roofed over for pro- 
tection against sun and rain, but there is no air chamber. 



84 



AN EGG FAEM. 



A transverse section of one of these covered yards is 
shown in Fig. 28. In both Fig. 27 and 28, the small 




FIG. 29. INTERIOR OF HATCHING HOUSE. 

crosses represent wire fences. In Fig. 27, the rooms, 
m, m, are where the operator stands to work the trap- 
setter and to control the layers' nests also, as mentioned 



FOR SITTERS IN" MILD CLIMATES. 85 

in the description of Fig. 25, and to operate the feed 
shelves, six in all, which are suspended in the main 
building and in the small yards over the dotted lines in 
the cut. The construction and working of these shelves 
is explained elsewhere. See Figs. 17 and 18. A trans- 
verse section of one of the shelves hung up in the main 
building is shown at J, Fig. 29. See description of 
various modifications of feed shelves, the simplest being 
the best. In Fig. 27, the long, narrow space, a, is occu- 
pied by nests and c by nest passages, both being of the 
kind previously-described. A few of the nests are shown 
divided off in the cut at b and a few of the nest passages 
are divided off at T. Compare T in Fig. 27 with T in 
Fig. 25 and with Tin Fig. 29, keeping in mind that the 
floor of each nest passage consists of a treadle. The 
alley, x, for the attendant, praviously described, being 
sunk 2 1-2 ft. below the ground, the end rooms, m, m, 
are also excavated to the same depth for better con- 
venience, and steps outride the building near the out- 
side doors, li, h, lead from the ground level to the con- 
tinuous pit or shallow cellar, m x m. At each end of- 
the long alley and near the door, h, a small ell or pro- 
jection will be seen, attached to the main building. The 
railroad extends into these ells, which are jnst large 
enough and high enough to hold the car, so that it will 
be out of the way when not in use. A section of the 
railroad track four feet long, situated between the ell 
and where the row of nests begins, is movable, that is, a 
piece of each rail is hinged at one end and can be turned 
up out of the way when railroad and car are not needed. 
Gates, to permit fowls to pass from I 7 " to y, are shown 
at G, G, G, G. Figure 30 illustrates one of these gates, G, 
made of wire netting, attached to a light wooden frame, 
and G- in Fig. 28 shows a gate in a perpendicular posi- 
tion and also, by means of dotted lines, a horizontal 
position. The yard, y, in Fig. 28, is roofed over. As 



86 AN EGO FARM. 

there are four small yards, there are, of course, sixteen 
gates in all, each being two by two feet. The four gates 
of each group, 67, 67, 67, 67, are opened and closed as one 
gate, by means of a wire, starting from one operating- 
room, m, and running the whole length of the mam 
building to the opposite operating room. The farthest 
gate in a group is thirty-three feet from the main build- 
ing. The gates are pivoted, transom fashion, and are 
perpendicular when closed, as at 67 in Fig. 30 and at 67 
in Fig. 28, and horizontal while open. They have a 
common pivot, consisting of a shaft of iron pipe, to 
which they are fastened in such fashion that they turn 




FIG. 30. GATE FOK COVKRID VAKBS. 

with it, not on it. The shaft extends into the operating 
room a few inches, where is attached a strong spoke or 
arm, three feet long, and to this arm is fastened the 
wire above described. By taking hold of the arm itself, 
if you are at the nearest room, or by means of the wire 
if you are at the distant room, the shaft is caused to 
make one-quarter of a complete revolution, which is all 
that is required to open the gates. They are made so as 
to close by gravity when released, and when shut they 
come to rest over the bottom fence rail, D. A board, 
B, runs the whole length of yard, y, and rests on the 
gates. See B in Fig. 30, and compare with the trans- 



FOE SITTEES LN" MILD CLIMATES. 87 

verse section of B, Fig. 28. When the gate is open, 
this board is at the position shown by the dotted lines in 
Fig. 28, and the feed dropping from the shelf, S, 
will land at A, but when the gate is closed this board, 
being in another position under the feed shelf, intercepts 
the falling grain, causing it to reach the ground at D, 
in the big yard instead of in the small one. 

Now, as heretofore mentioned, the layers of the sit- 
ting breed and the sitters actually sitting, occupy the 
same building. The layers are allowed the freedom of 
one large yard, Y, and two small yards, y, during the 
day, the four gates, G, being kept open all the time, 
excepting during the latter part of the afternoon. Wire 
netting is stretched so as to prevent the birds from get- 
ting at the feed shelf. The latter being only two and 
one-half feet from the ground, it is conveniently reached 
by the attendant, who passes the whole length of the 
covered yard each day to load the shelf. At intervals, 
during the day, whenever he is in either room, m, he 
operates the shelves at all four of the small yards for the 
exercise of the layers. The running they actually do 
while he is controlling their movements is only a small 
part of the scheme. The habit of expectation being 
formed, they will run back and forth hundreds of times 
every day and visit the small yards, whether the shelves 
are operated or not. The feed shelves in the main 
building are operated by hand hammers only and at 
either end indifferently, but those in the small yards are 
operated by pivoted hammers, cords, pulleys and wires 
(as described elsewhere) when you are at the end of the 
main building the farthest away, and by hand hammers 
when you are near. In the ground plan, Fig. 27, the 
straight dotted lines show the location of the six shelves. 
One of the shelves in the long building is shown sus- 
pended by wires or cords at J, Fig. 29. This shelf 
being, as we have said, operated by hand hammers at 



88 AN" EOxG FARM. 

either end, must be allowed to swing freely both ways 
and therefore it has no stopper, but the shelves in the 
covered yards, y, have stoppers to swing against, the 
same as shown at i in Fig. 111. At either operating 
room, no matter which, you can, by this very simple, 
extremely durable and exceedingly cheap apparatus, 
which, moreover, is not liable to get out of order, con- 
trol every nest, either of sitting or laying bird, and oper- 
ate any or all of the six feed shelves, and open or close 
all of the sixteen gates. You can separate the layers as 
a whole from the sitters in less than half a minute, and 
at will separate each individual sitter from all the layers 
and from all the other sitters. 

The employment of sitting hens in large numbers has 
not hitherto been looked upon with favor, because 
poultry keepers have not availed themselves of suitable 
conveniences, having, in fact, not been aware of the cer- 
tainty and precision with which the birds can be made 
to do what yon want them to do. A flock of two hun- 
dred can be made to run two hundred feet in a minute, 
either towards you or away from you or to the right or 
the left, as_you choose, and this without your having 
spent any time at all to speak of in their preliminary 
training. Just a few pulls of a wire or some other appli- 
ance, while you are at the premises working at other 
matters, and, lo and behold, they have a liberal educa- 
tion, — are highly accomplished, in fact, before you know 
it. You can then do just what you want with them by 
merely reaching for a lever or a cord. The bugbear of sit- 
ting hens has vanished into thin air. There is not a thing 
expensive, excepting the six hundred and sixty feet of 
shafts or pipe, and this, thanks to the cheapness of 
modern iron goods, costs less than the price of one of 
the ten incubators it displaces. The figure 4's and con- 
nections seem rather costly, but made in quantities are 
really quite inexpensive, and all the small wooden parts 



FOR SITTERS IN" MILD CLIMATES. 89 

of the nests and passages can be cheaply sawed by power. 
The pipes should be put in position and screwed 
together and the places for holes, of one-eighth inch 
diameter, marked, after which the drilling should be done 
by power and by means of these holes the arms can be 
readily attached in the main building and the gates 
fastened on at the covered yards. In comparison with 
this simple and cheap equipment, an equivalent in incu- 
bators and suitable incubator rooms or cellars is compli- 
cated and costly. 

It is a matter of no consequence whether or no a sit- 
ter returns to the identical nest she left, but it is desira- 
ble that she should return to one not far away, and she 
will always do so. If her nest is near the center of 
the row, she will not go to either end of the row, and, 
if she belongs near the right-hand end of the row, she 
will not mistake the left-hand end for it. To facilitate 
matters, layers' nests are mixed with those of sitters the 
whole length of the row, and localities are designated by 
barrels, boxes, sheaves of straw, boughs, etc., placed 
just outside the building. See Chapter XIV. 

Just before opening the nests of the sitters, a feed 
shelf in one of the small yards is operated, and, after 
waiting a short interval for the layers to get in — they 
make tracks at a rate not to hinder you long — they are 
shut in by operating the gates. The shelf and gates at 
the opposite small yard are next used to catch any layers 
not captured the first time, though probably ninety- 
eight per cent or more were caught. If one or two or 
three in a hundred are not entrapped at all there will be 
no particular harm. The principal object in separating 
the layers is to prevent them from devouring the feed 
designed for the sitters. Troughs, ample for a full day's 
supply of water for both layers and sitters, are in the 
large yard. Of course, labor saving requires that this 
be conducted by pipes and the flow governed by simply 



90 AN" EGG FARM. 

turning a cock. Or, in the region of mild weather 
previously described, a float valve can be used during the 
greater part of the year to govern the supply and the 
attendant need not lift a finger. For the greatest con- 
venience in feeding grain, bins are located in the oper- 
ating rooms, m, Fig. 27, and access to the feed shelves 
is by doors at t, leading from the operating rooms into 
the small covered yards, and by the door, s, which leads 
to the shelves in the main building. The shelves are of 
course loaded by rule, an exact quantity of grain being- 
placed on each daily, and all fed that day to the last 
kernel, so that rats will not be baited to the premises at 
night. The operation of charging the feed shelves is a 
very quick one, their hight from the ground being con- 
venient, four feet in the main building and three feet in 
the covered yards. With a shallow scoop of just the 
proper size and shape, the attendant distributes grain as 
fast as he can walk, about five hundred feet of shelves 
being tended in less than fifteen minutes, and one charge 
lasts all day. 

The curved dotted lines in the big yards in the 
ground plan^ Fig. 27, show the location of board fences, 
or rims, they may be called, since they are only one foot 
high. The yard is plentifully supplied with straw for 
scratching purposes and these rims are to keep it from 
getting into the corners of the yard. The wide gates in 
the center, at right and left in the cut, admit a team 
hitched to a hay tedder or to a side delivery rake. The 
area in which these implements are to be used is not 
circular, as the cut might appear to indicate, but ellip- 
tical, for as before stated, the cut was reduced to suit the 
limits of a page. The circuit then is as liberal as an 
ellipse occupying nearly all the space in a yard one hun- 
dred and forty-four feet by fifty feet. Plowing and har- 
rowing, as well as raking, can be handily done in this 
ellipse on the occasions of the removal of the old straw 



FOR SITTERS IX MIXD CLIMATES. 91 

to be replaced with fresh, or when straw cannot be had. 
The stirring of straw with a hand fork, or digging soil 
with a spade, on any considerable scale, is a back number. 
If it is desired to scatter grain broadcast, a seeder car- 
ried by the operator and worked by a small crank, as if 
he had a coffee mill slung over his shoulders, can be 
used, but the preferable plan is to first rake the straw 
into a continuous winding windrow with the side deliv- 
ery rake, and then let the driver of the hay tedder rein 
his team with one hand and scatter grain with the other, 
while he goes lengthwise of the windrow. When the 
horseless carriage is perfected, substitute it for the team 
in seeding and raking at the hatching house yards and 
also for all operations where horses are used in the 
colony or itinerant plan. The motor-propelled bicycle 
is to be utilized, besides, to afford the attendant quick 
access to all parts of the plant. Use finely cracked corn 
always, on or under litter at the scratching places, and 
on feed shelves, in preference to whole grain, so' as to 
make more work for the fowls. The board rims have 
an additional use and one which is quite important. 
Being in the track where the sitters race hack and forth 
to find grain near the small yards, these diminutive 
fences are jumped upon at every trip, affording wing 
exercise. Nothing pleases a sitter better than to use her 
wings by flying up on something, as Avell as her feet. 
Not only does she secure, after her sedentary existence, 
grateful exercise of muscles, the largest in her body, which 
are attached to her wings ; but by the thorough airing of 
her whole plumage her wing gymnastics give, and by the 
disinfecting properties of the earth in which she shuffles, 
her nest is kept sweet. Oh, nature understands her 
business, and the first air inhaled by the younglings 
should be altogether purer than the noisome exhalations 
of a reeking, perspiring incubator. The whole economy 
of incubation of any species of bird is one of the most 
perfect and admirable things in the universe. 



CHAPTEK IX. 

MANAGING THE SITTERS. 

We are now prepared to explain in full the manage- 
ment of the sitting hens. It is, say, 4 o'clock p. m. 
The sitters have been shut in their nests all day without 
food or water, the doors being in the second position, 
closed, but the hens have been exceedingly comfortable, 
owing to the special provision for guarding against the 
heat overhead and permitting the free circulation of air 
in every part of the building, the comfort of the attend- 
ant and of the birds both being secured. The layers 
have had access to all the yards and to their own nests 
all clay, the doors leading to the latter remaining at the 
third position. Enter attendant at either operating 
room, it is immaterial which: 

1. Operate feed shelf at one of the small yards. 

2. Close' the gates to that yard. 

3. Operate feed shelf at opposite small yard at same 
side of main building. 

4. Close the gates to that yard. 

5. . Put doors of layers' nests in second position 
(closed). 

G. Put doors of sitters' nests in third position (not 
quite wide open). 

7. Operate the long feed shelf same side of the 
building. 

8. Put doors of sitters' nests in second position 
(closed). 

Next go through the eight operations aforesaid on the 
other side of the building. Next go through the alley 
• l ' 92 



MANAGING THE SITTERS. 93 

and take from nests any sitters which failed to leave the 
nests at the proper time, the nests being "get-at-able" 
because each has a door fronting the alley, as will be 
described further on. The 7th operation in the pro- 
gram drops grain in full view of the sitters on a level 
with their nests and only about two feet away, and the 
sound of the bell or of the hammer being one to which 
they had been accustomed for months, if not for years, 
the cases will be few where taking them off by hand will 
be necessary. If there was very much of this removing 
sitters by "main strength and awkwardness," labor saving 
would bid a sad farewell to the whole scheme. But so 
strong is the confirmed habit of going with the crowd at 
the hammer stroke, and so exciting is the sight of their 
companions feasting so near, that few will fail to leave. 
Those proving tardy are marked by a dab of fresh red 
paint on the white groundwork of their feathers, and if 
you have plenty of other sitters, when the bird has 
received two or three marks you can not only relieve 
her from her task, but remove her from the building 
altogether. The nest boxes being of wirework mostly, 
the hens which did not leave their nests, if any, can be 
readily seen. Next, while the sitters are running all 
over the large yard, and from one small yard to the 
other, and visiting the water troughs and dusting places, 
the operator inspects all the nests to detect anything 
amiss. Whenever he reaches either end of the alley he 
operates all the shelves in the small yards, and perhaps 
in the main building also. The sitters will run around 
with persistent activity the most of the time, whether 
the feed shelves are worked or not. Finely cut dried 
clover rowen or nicely cured corn fodder early in the 
season, or some sort of green vegetable stuff later, and 
gravel, must be in the yards for all, both layers and 
sitters. When the birds have had time enough for eat- 
ing, the doors of passages to sitters' nests are put in the 



94 



AX EGG FARM. 



first position, held open by the figure 4's, the shaft and 
arms being left at the second position, with the cords 
slack so that the sitters can spring the traps, and the 
attendant's presence is now no longer necessary. The 
gates, G, G, G, G, should not be opened to let the layers 
out until about sundown, so as to give the sitters plenty 
of time to return to their nests, and so as to prevent 




^n 



-ur 



FIG. 31. ROW OF NESTS SEEN FROM BELOW. 

birds among the layers having broody inclinations from 
taking possession of nests belonging to the sitters. 

Figure 31 shows the convenience for the attendant's 
work at the nests, the view being taken from the sunken 
alley and giving the position of a row of nests on one 
side, the bottom of the nests being two and one-half 
feet higher than the ground at the bottom of the alley. 
One rail of the railroad track is shown at w, and one of 



MANAGING THE SITTERS. 95 

its supports .s shown at u, it having been set in the 
stonework when the wall was built. The doors in front 
of the nests are of wirework, the mesh being one inch, 
to keep out rats, attached to a light wooden frame, d 1 
showing a closed door, and (P one which is open; b is a 
nest with its front exposed as it would be for gathering 
eggs or for other purposes. One side of the wooden rim 
four inches wide, which surrounds the nest on four sides, 
is represented at z. Wirework, two-inch mesh, separat- 
ing the roost from the alley, is seen at g g. Compare 
this cut with Figs, 25, 26, 27 and 29. 

As was hinted before, when we were describing the reg- 
ular daily program of the management of sitters, if there 
were many fowls to be lifted from their nests the task 
would be an onerous one. Not only do we propagate a 
sitting breed exemplary in all motherly conduct, and 
cull and reject obstinate laggards, but whenever we do 
have to catch a bird which overdoes the virtue of con- 
stancy, the conveniences must be such as to reduce the 
bother to the very minimum. Below the aperture, r, is 
seen the edge of the roost floor, s, upon which the delin- 
quent bird is placed after she has been taken from the 
nest. When the nest, b, is opened, r is opened also. 
Take the fowl in both hands, with the thumbs confining 
her wings, and place her on the floor, s. Elsewhere 
an entirely different method of handling a sitter is 
described, one hand only being employed, and her wings 
being left free, which is the way to proceed when the 
bird is to be lowered and placed on the floor at your feet, 
but not the correct way when she is to be raised and put 
through a small door. The distance between b and r is 
small, which expedites the operation, and also both of these 
are within easy reach, b being 2 1-2 ft., and s 5 1-2 ft. 
above where the attendant stands. The trap-setter 
shaft is I, and m the layer nest shaft, correctly repre- 
sented as being one but slightly higher than the other. 



96 AN EGG FARM. 

In all the other cuts these shafts were purposely placed 
wide apart, to give a plainer view of the cords, arms 
and other parts. In Fig. 29, for the same reason, the 
roost, r, was entirely omitted. It is 144 ft. long, and 
its floor, set on a slant downwards toward the outside of 
the building, is only 3 1-4 ft. wide, so that it will not 
intercept the grain which falls from the shelf. One 
perch only is needed, and this stands 18 in. above the 
roost floor and is 144 ft. long. 



CHAPTER X. 



COOPS FOR CHICKENS. 



The construction of the coops for young chickens will 
now be described. A chicken coop must be adapted to 
warm weather and cold, and especially to rains, be easily 
cleaned, and made rat-proof at night. The old-fashioned 
triangular pattern, Fig. 33, secures all this, and also 
gives small chickens a chance to escape under the eaves 
from the feet of the hens. Two hens are put together 
with their broods, for reasons which will be given in 
another place. The size proper to accommodate a 
double brood is 2 1-2x3 1-2 ft. upon the ground, with 
roof 3 ft. from eaves to peak. A bit of scantling is fas- 
tened to each roof for a handle. The door, a, is hinged 
to open upwards. There is a small door at the rear 
that will allow chickens to pass, but not grown fowls. 




FI«. 32. THE FIGURE -i. SEE CUTS 25, 26 AND 29. 



An opening for ventilation is made near the peak, and 
covered with wire cloth. Take inch boards, b b, Fig. 34, 
and nail strongly, planed side up, to the cleats, c c, and 

7 97 



98 



AN EGG FARM. 



clinch. Let both ends of each cleat project three inches, 
and the outside edge of each two inches. This is the 
movable floor, and must be of such size that the coop 
shall rest entirely upon the projecting ends and edges of 
the cleats, then when the doors are closed, all rain will 
be shed outside the floor. In Fig. 35, a section of the 
coop shows the floor in its place. When the doors are 




FIG. 33. COOP FOK CHICKS. 



closed at night, leave the large one, a, Fig. 33, ajar one- 
half or one inch, according to the weather, for air, and 
fasten it with nails for pegs stuck in holes bored at various 
distances through the cleats, at d d, Fig. 34, which will 
make the coop perfectly rat-proof. Once a week, after 
opening the door, a, to enable the chickens to escape 
through the slats out of the way, slide the coop slowly 
length wise of the cleats away from the floor, which must 
be scraped thoroughly ; then give it a shovelful of dry 
earth and replace. You will always have a dry, inodor- 
ous apartment, and will not shut up chickens in close, 
foul air. In every small coop or box for live animals 
there must be openings for the admission of air and 
escape of noxious emanations, not only at the top, but 
at the extreme bottom. This matter is often overlooked 
in shipping coops, to the great detriment of the occu- 



COOPS FOR CHICKENS. 99 

pants, the openings fit the top being erroneously deemed 
sufficient. 

All the chickens destined for the itinerant stations 
must, as mentioned on Page 19, be fed indirectly. For 
two days only are they and the hens fed upon the floor 
of the coop. Then for a week they are fed in the box 
given in Fig. 36. It has no bottom, and the top, not 
shown in the figure, is temporary, and composed of loose 
boards. Place it so that its door shall meet the small 
door in the coop, having first dropped in the feed at the 
corner, and covered the box with the boards in such a 
manner as to admit a little light. After a week the 

chickens, being strong 
enough to venture some 
distance, are fed from a 
box of galvanized iron 
6x1(3 in., and 3-4 in. deep, 
Fig. 37. A wire grating, 
F, with meshes one inch 
FIG 34# square, protects the feed 

from the feet of the 
chickens, but admits their bills. The grating is covered 
at pleasure by a lid, G, these being hinged to opposite 
sides, of the box. When such boxes are placed in a row, 
Fig. 38, each filled with feed, one for each coop, with the 
lids down, a snap-hook is attached to a ring which is fas- 
tened to each lid, and a wire connects with all the hooks, 
as in Fig. 38. One pull opens all the lids, and the 
£? chickens are at dinner. 

These feed boxes are carried to the granary to be filled, 
using a wheelbarrow, in which many may be packed at 
a time. The coops are twenty feet apart, in a single 
row, and the wheelbarrow is rolled along the line, and 
the boxes, with lids closed, are put on the side of the 
coops near the small doors, which are shut, in order 
that the hens may not worry when the chickens are feed- 




100 



AN EGG FARM. 



ing. If the distance is considerable, use the low-down 
wagon in place of the wheelbarrow. The hens are fed 
and watered in cups, fastened to the inside of the coops 
as high as they can reach. The cups are filled with 
whole corn once each twenty-four hours, after dark in 

the evening, so as not to at- 
tract the attention of either 
hens or chickens. When the 
chickens are a month old, a 
part of their feed may be buried 
near the coop early in the 
morning, before they are let 
out, so that they may scratch 
during the day, although this 
is not essential, for when there 
is unlimited range, young chicks will always take suffi- 
cient exercise. Whenever it is rainy, the box used the 
first week for feeding, Fig. 36, is again resorted to for 
that purpose. 

The additional time required to feed chickens indi- 
rectly is slight, if operations are systematized. All the 





FIG. 36. FEED BOX FOR CHICKS. 



chickens of the breeding or pedigree stock, and of the 
sitting class also, are reared at a separate part of the 
farm, and fed directly. 

When the hens are removed from the chickens, the 
latter huddle together nights upon the floor for some 



COOPS FOE CHICKENS. 101 

weeks, but when old enough to perch, the box, Fig. 36, 
is placed upon the movable coop floor, and the coop is 
placed upon the top of the whole, the box being of the 
size of the boards, I b, in Fig. 34, so that the eaves and 
sides of the coop overlap sufficiently to shed rain. The 
box has two- perches permanently fastened to it, one of 
which is seen in Fig. 36. This roost is rat-proof, and 
half a bushel or so of dry earth keeps it clean. 



OHAPTEE XL 

FOWLS FOE LAYERS AND SITTERS. 

The layers must be of a breed that affords chickens 
easily reared, for success in the nursery department is 
all important and they must be at the head of the list 
of prolific layers of fair sized eggs. None but a non-sit- 
ting race will answer, for, needing to be broken up fre- 
quently, sitters make fully double the labor during half 
of the year; and the feathers must be light, because 
dark ones show badly when chickens are dressed. 
There is at present no breed that fulfills all these con- 
ditions so well as the White Leghorn. It may degener- 
ate in time, as other races of fowls have done, by being 
bred for fancy instead of utility, but it possessed at its 
first importation more vigor than any other non-sitting 
breed. In breeding poultry, show and utility do not get 
on well together in the long run. To fanciers unques- 
tionably belongs the credit of originating improved 
breeds, but afterwards, in fixing conventional points for 
the show room, the stock is often ruined in their hands. 

Many breeders of livestock, — not poultry alone, but in 
other departments, — do not fully understand the relation 
between fancy points and useful ones. The confusion 
in the minds of some writers on this matter is evident. 
"Why should not a fowl that scores high in shape of 
comb and tail and in color of legs and plumage, lay just 
as well as one that scores low in these things ?" some 
one asks. The answer is that a fancy comb and a fancy 
plumage in that individual fowl have certainly no direct 

102 



FOWLS FOR LAYERS AXD SITTERS. 



103 



power to prevent her from laying well, bnt this is onl} r 
part of the story. That fowl has a history of descent. 
It is harder to breed to the point where good laying is a 
trait of the strain if yon select your breeding stock each 
generation on the basis of fancy points as well as of lay- 
ing qualities ; for while choosing your breeders, you 
necessarily pass by on account of faulty plumage some 
of the most eminent layers that would have helped your 
strain mightily. 

An illustration will not be amiss, there is so much 
ignorance prevailing on this point. Frederick the Great 
had a body guard of soldiers of gigantic stature. The 
question might be put, is there any reason in the world 
why a red haired or a brown haired man may not be as 
tall as black haired men ? None in the world, surely ; 
bnt if the monarch desired a guard of the very tallest 




FIG. 37. FKED BOX WITH GiiATING. 



men his realm could possibly afford, then the average 
bight of the battalion would be greater if there were 
no restrictions on color of eyes, hair, and so on, than if 
one specified shade only was admissible. Suppose the 
requirements were black hair together with blue eyes 
and great stature, the greater the better, how would the 
average night of the selected men turn out ? As such 
eyes and hair do sometimes go together, the guard 
might thus be recruited if the realm contained popula- 



104 AX EGG FARM. 

tion enough, but the average bight of its men would be 
less than if the selection had not been handicapped by 
the specifications we have supposed. 

-A-PPty ^ ie sam e reasoning to cattle. The Jerseys are 
now of every imaginable color— solid, broken, black, 
white, reel, fawn, brown, roan, buff, spotted, brindled, 
ring-streaked, speckled and grizzled. Suppose it were 
desired to select breeders for a hundred years from all 
the j3n re Jerseys in the world to produce a strain of the 
largest sized, pure-bred animals possible. Two entirely 
separate herds are to be built up, neither of which shall 
draw from the other, but each to draw freely from the 
whole world beside. One herd must be produced of the 
greatest sized animals possible and all of a solid bay, 
and the other herd of the greatest sized animals possible, 
but entirely irrespective of color. Which herd, at the 
end of one hundred years, other things being equal, 
would contain the largest cattle ? 

A drawback to the Leghorn family is the great size of 
combs and wattles. Possibly this trait may be gradually 
bred out in time without impairing the useful traits of 
the breed, but it is doubtful. It has been noticed that 
the most vigorous birds and the best layers have these 
appendages the most fully developed, and it is probable 
that in the Mediterranean regions, where they originated 
and where they were bred at the monasteries for cen- 
turies, the monks of the middle ages being enthusiastic 
poultry fanciers, and the breed being extremely ancient, 
the conscious selection of the best layers for breeders 
resulted unwittingly in the selection of birds with the 
biggest combs, 

Or, the mere fact of the keeping of the breed un- 
mixed for hundreds of years, would, of itself, have 
resulted in a large combed breed, even if the keep- 
ers were not consciously selecting eggs for hatching 
from the best layers (if large combs and prolificness 



FOWLS FOR LAYERS AND SITTERS. 



105 



naturally go together) ; for the best layers being the 
most fully represented by newly laid eggs in the nests, 
would, also, by obvious doctrine of chances, or, more 
properly, by mathematical law, be the most fully repre- 
sented in eggs for hatching purposes and in number of 
chicks hatched and reared ; unless, indeed, extreme pro- 
lificness was accompanied by deficient vitality of the 
germs. It would be inevitable that the numerical pre- 
ponderance of eggs for hatching laid by large combed, 
prolific birds would operate to develop a strain of both 
large combs and prolificness, until a limit was reached 
beyond which the process could not go. This limit is 
discovered in the fact that the production of an unusually 
great number of eggs laid by a fowl is accompanied by 




FIG. 38. ARRANGEMENT FOR OPENING FEED BOXES. 



a lack of vitality in the eggs, excepting those at the 
beginning of the laying, which experience shows are 
comparatively exempt, though probably even these are 
somewhat affected. 

There are two other ways in which the great size of 
combs of fowls from the Mediterranean may have been 
brought about. The combs were highly prized for food, 
and, at certain eras, the monks were more given to 
luxury than to austerity ; or, in periods of rigid disci- 
pline, while living on bread and water they may have 



106 AN EGG FARM. 

sold the combs for the revenue of the house, and, there- 
fore, may have kept up a careful selection of large 
combed birds for breeders. And there is, besides, the 
consideration of a warm climate. The wild parent stock 
of our domestic fowls live, in part at least, high up on 
the sides of mountains, and very likely the climate of 
Italy and vicinity may be warmer than that to which 
their progenitors were accustomed. As time progresses, 
the question of influence of a warm climate on size of 
comb will be determined by noting the appearance of 
the Leghorns now kept quite extensively in our southern 
states. 

The drawbacks of large combs and wattles are, freez- 
ing in our northern states, and the discomforts and 
strain resulting from carrying so much weight on the 
head. It appears as though the circulation of blood in 
the head is somehow affected by these excessive appen- 
dages, for it has been observed that a Leghorn having 
frequent spells of giddiness and staggering can some- 
times be quickly and permanently cured by trimming 
the comb, and we would always recommend the trim- 
ming of both comb and wattles for both sexes, Fig. 39, 
w^hen two-thirds grown, especially in view of freezing, 
when zero weather occurs. Use shears or scissors instead 
of a knife so as to pinch the blood vessels and mitigate 
the flow of blood. The operation is not so painful as it 
might appear, we will state for the benefit of the Society 
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Nature evi- 
dently provided that the comb and wattles should be 
comparatively destitute of feeling. As, during the thou- 
sands on thousands of years the males fought for posses- 
sion of the females and the comb and wattles were the 
parts seized upon in the struggle, a lack of sensitiveness 
in these appendages would be perpetuated and aug- 
mented on the principal of natural selection. So indif- 
ferent is a fowl that after being dubbed it will uncon- 



FOWLS FOR LAYERS AND SITTERS. 



107 




108 AN" EGG FARM. 

cemedly fall to eating its own comb and wattles, if 
allowed the privilege. This dullness or fewness of nerves 
of feeling in the combs, when understood, may alleviate 
the pangs felt by many persons at the mention of what 
has been wrongly called a cruel practice. It is easier 
for a fowl to stand clubbing than to endure a frozen comb. 

The layers are relied upon to produce the principal 
part of the income, and as they are chief in "point of 
numbers, the detached stations where they are kept 
form the main part of the establishment, to which the 
breeding and sitting departments are merely tributary. 
Most of the layers must be kept only until the age of 
from fifteen to twenty months, and then killed for sale, 
and their places supplied by young pullets. This course 
is necessary, because the yield of eggs is greatest during 
the first laying season if the hens are of an early matur- 
ing breed, and are fed high and stimulated to the 
utmost, as they must be to secure the highest profit. 
For, though hens are still vigorous at two years, it will 
be found that after a course of forcing to their greatest 
capacity through the first season, they cannot generally 
be made to lay profusely during the second. If we 
chose not to put on the full pressure of diet the first 
year, but to feed moderately high for two or three years, 
a fair yield of eggs would be afforded during each. But 
such a course would not pay as well as to keep pullets 
only, and maintain a forcing system constantly from the 
time they commence to lay until they stop, and then 
market them before they eat up the profits in the idle- 
ness of fall and winter. 

Pullets grow fast during the early part of their lives, and 
give a return in flesh for what they eat then. After they 
commence laying, their eggs are prompt dividends, and, 
besides, their bodies increase in weight until the age of a 
year or more. Young hens may be killed a fortnight after 
ceasing to lay, and if they have been skillfully fed, their 



FOWLS FOR LATEES AND SITTERS. 109 

flesh will prove excellent for the table as compared with 
fowls that are two or three years old. It is no wonder that 
there is little liking for the adnlt fowls the markets ordi- 
narily afford, for they comprise many that are very old 
and comparatively unfit for food. But regular customers 
will soon approve fowls a year old, which have been sup- 
plied with the most suitable food, and brought to just 
the proper fatness, and delivered freshly killed and 
neatly dressed, and our experience proves that the fami- 
lies upon the egg route will order all that the establish- 
ment has to dispose of. The high pressure mode of feed- 
ing and turning off while yet young, is then the true 
policy. 

The point is, there is a certain consumption of food 
to enable any animal to keep alive. The ordinary vital 
operations, aside from laying or increase of size, de- 
mand force, obtained through food — which is money — 
and we should aim to support only such fowls as are all 
the while giving returns in either growth or eggs. The 
long period of molting and recovering from its conse- 
quent exhaustion, costs, as does the maintenance of the 
vital fires during the cold of winter. It is a matter of 
quick balancing of profits and expenses with animals, 
which, like fowls, consume the value of their bodies in 
about ten months. If it is urged that the stimulating 
diet and unnatural prolificness will subject the stock to 
disease, the reply is that the regimen is not continued 
more than six or eight months, and in that time evil 
effects will not ordinarily follow, for the birds are 
allowed freedom, sun and air, and special provision is 
made for daily exercise. As none of the fowls to which 
this forcing system is applied, leave descendants, no 
evil effects are accumulated and entailed upon the stock. 
The layers are from the eggs of fowls that have not been 
subjected to any such pressure, and during the period 
of their principal growth they have been given a nutri- 



110 AN EGG FARM. '*" » 

tious but not especially stimulating food — like,a?colt at ^ 
pasture. When they arrive at the laying age, ihey are : ' 
then kept as is the horse, which is kept,' .broken ,t$> work, 
and put to constant and severe labor, and fed as high as 
he will bear. * / ' 

FOWLS FOR SITTERS/-" <7 

The sitters are of a breed chosen, for persistence and Jn 
regularity in incubation, fidelity to their chickens, and /^ 
gentleness of disposition. The Plymouth Eocks are our 
choice, and cannot be excelled for hatching and rearing. 
The white variety is preferred, because when a fowl .is* 
dressed, white pin feathers show less than colored ones. 
Also, as stated elsewhere, there are occasions when we 
want to designate individuals by a dab of fresh red or 
blue paint, which shows well on white plumage. 

The sitters are not kept at detached stations like the 
layers, for several reasons. One is, they should all be 
near together, because of the. great amount of attendance 
necessary in connection with hatching. Then the build- 
ings should be large enough for the keeper to enter, in 
order to take care of the nests and chickens, but the 
size of the structure and the risk of jarring eggs will 
prevent moving. Nor can the system of indirect feed- 
ing and no yards be pursued, for the sitters should be 
fed at the attendant's feet, and tamed so as to submit 
quietly to the handling they receive while hatching and 
rearing. Their yards are sufficiently large to admit of 
exercise, and for the same treason their dry grain is 
buried in the ground or under straw. In very cold 
weather, they are confined to their houses for warmth, 
and are given a stimulating diet to promote winter lay- 
ing, not so much for the value of the eggs as to render 
it certain that there shall be a considerable number of 
birds ready to sit in February, and many more in March. 

The fowls chiefly depended upon for this consist of the 
earliest pullets of the previous year, and also the old 



FOWLS FOR LAYERS AXD SITTERS. Ill 

hens that had been employed much of the time the pre- 
ceding summer in hatching two or three broods. The 
prevention of laying, by hatching and rearing, causes 
birds thus occupied to lay earlier the next season. By a 
little management, there is no difficulty in procuring 
plenty of offers to sit from February to June. One-half 
the sitting stock is kept until two years old, and of the 
pullets of the sitting class raised yearly, some are hatched 
in February and March, and some in the first week in 
September, the better to secure sitting at various times 
in the year. Except in winter, the sitters should not 
be fed with a view to encourage laying, but the aim 
should be to keep them on as moderate an allowance as 
possible, and not have them become poor. Their specific 
purpose is incubation, and they should be made to do as 
much of this as possible. By uniting broods, when a 
hen has hatched one nestfnl of eggs she may be given 
another immediately, and, if managed rightly, she will 
not be injured by sitting a double term. Each hen 
must hatch two broods per year, at least, and some will 
hatch three. In this way, the stock of five hundred 
sitters will produce ten thousand chickens yearly, or an 
average of twenty apiece. 



CHAPTEE XII 



THE KINDS OF FOOD. 



When poultry are kept upon a large scale, they can 
obtain but few insects, for the latter are attracted and 
supported by vegetation, of which there is next to none 
near the adult fowls, though care is taken to rear a part 
of the chickens among growing crops. The ample 
grounds around each station house, and the areas 
inclosed by the yards for sitters and for breeders, give 
space to secure cleanliness and exercise, but that is about 
all. As far as affording insect foraging is concerned, a 
paved court in a city, or a continuous rock, would be 
almost as good. Ground room out of doors upon our 
farm, whether inclosed in yards or not, is principally 
for air, sun and exercise. These secured, it matters not 
whether there is more or less space, so long as there are 
so few insects to be procured. We hear much about the 
number of fowls proper to an acre— some say fifty, and 
others one hundred ; but in order to give one hundred a 
good forage, they should have the range of no less than 
four or five acres, containing grass and a variety of 
other crops. 

Now, if we give up as impracticable, as we must, pas- 
turage of this sort, and afford nothing but a field 
entirely bald, save for a few patches of clover and such 
other green stuff as may be plucked when young and 
tender by the birds, under such circumstances one acre 
is as good as four. We go further, and say that fifteen 
or twenty square rods of ground, and the grain for the 
fowls buried to induce exercise, will answer the purpose 

112 



THE KINDS OF FOOD. 113 

better than an acre without such an artificial provision 
of natural conditions. But the feed, which must be all 
brought to the fowls, costs, in money if purchased, or in 
labor if raised upon the cultivated part of the farm. In 
fowl keeping upon a small scale, where one flock has for 
a range as large a portion of a farm swarming with 
insects as they choose to travel over, food is obtained 
for nothing. The food for fowls is more expensive than 
that of any other livestock, in proportion to the value 
of the animals themselves, necessitating economy in its 
choice. There are many things "good" for fowls, but 
we must use principally those only which supply all the 
needful nutritive elements, and are, at the same time, 
the cheapest. 

There are three classes of articles of which the natural 
and indispensable diet of fowls consists, — grains or seeds, 
green plants and insects. Corn and wheat screenings — 
corn especially — should be the main reliance to fill the 
first division ; boiled potatoes and raw cabbage in win- 
ter, and newly mown grass, clover or alfalfa in summer, 
are the most suitable vegetables, and chandlers' scraps 
and butchers' waste, procured fresh, are the most eco- 
nomical animal food, excepting near the coast, where 
clams and various sorts of fish can be obtained at a 
trifling cost. While depending mostly upon the above, 
because they are the best and cheapest, a great many 
other things must be given occasionally for the sake of 
variety, such as oats, buckwheat, rye, barley, wheat and 
brewers' grains ; dried corn fodder and clover row en in 
winter ; various vegetables, such as carrots, beets and 
yellow turnips, boiled and thickened with corn meal or 
wheat bran ; raw onions chopped fine ; and for animal 
food, sometimes near cities young calves may be obtained 
from milkmen at a low price, and the carcasses boiled 
and fed. This last remark applies chiefly to cities at 
the east and northeast. 



114 AN EGG FARM. 

In the cattle regions of the west, calves are too valu- 
able to be thus sacrificed, while in the last named local- 
ity the by-products of the great packing houses form a 
ready and valuable substitute. It must be an invariable 
rule to give every bird, whether young chicken, layer, 
sitter, or fattening for the table, a portion in each of 
the three divisions, — grain, fresh vegetables and animal 
food,— every day in the year. It has been asserted by 
some that there is no substitute that can fill the place of 
insects for poultry. We say that beef and mutton, or 
lights and livers, or fresh butchers' waste of any kind, 
are as much better as oats are better than grass for 
horses of which much work is demanded. A partridge 
or wild jungle fowl can produce her normal number of 
eggs from forest fare, but not such great numbers as are 
laid by a' Leghorn, Hamburg or Houdan. 

A portion of the grain fed must be ground. The nat- 
ural mill of a fowl's gizzard, containing hard gravel for 
millstones, is capable of grinding all sorts of grain per- 
fectly, but at too great expense of muscular exertion 
which, though involuntary, is severe, and employs force- 
that had better be used for growing eggs or flesh, and 
therefore meal and bran have their uses for the poulterer. 

But the soft feed idea must not be overworked. The 
reasoning that a beginner naturally falls into is that it 
is a great pity that so much force should be applied at 
such a tremendous disadvantage in reducing hard grain 
in the gristmills of the birds when the miller can grind 
for thousands. But the wondrousl_y powerful muscles 
of the gizzard are there to be used. Always go cau- 
tiously in any plan to tamper with nature in feeding, 
hatching, rearing, or anything else connected with 
poultry. Experiments have proved that the "balauce 
of power," or equilibrium of functions in the fowl's 
economy makes the vigorous exercise 01 the gizzard very 
beneficial. The explanation is, in part, that the secre- 



THE KINDS OF POOD. 115' 

tion of the digestive fluids is promoted by the grinding 
process, jnst as the flow of saliva in a person's month is 
influenced by the act of chewing, even if nothing is 
chewed but a straw. A good illustration of the fallacy 
of unnatural expedients was afforded in feeding experi- 
ments with hogs. It having been noticed that numerous 
bits, large and small, of undigested corn were passed 
from these animals, when it had been fed raw and 
unground, it was supposed that a greater amount of 
nutriment would be afforded by a given weight of ground 
corn, as compared with an equal weight of the same 
grain unground. But by carefully weighing both the 
corn and the swine, the surprising result was reached 
that the whole grain gave the greatest gain in growth. 
The powerful muscles of the hog's jaws imply use, and 
the secretion of saliva certainly, and the flow of other 
digestive juices in the stomach probably, are by nature's 
methods, persistently fixed in the lapse of ages, connected 
with the workings of the aforesaid muscles. 

The variety in feed for fowls previously hinted at is in 
accordance with nature. When on free range they glean 
a little of everything, and the particular article most 
feasible for the poulterer to feed is optional with him. 
Brewers' grains, the waste at fisheries where great num- 
bers of fish are dressed, chandlers' greaves, and many 
other things are unavailable over large areas of our 
country. As for the "balanced ration" we hear so 
much about in connection with all species of domestic 
animals, we must feed what we can get and that which 
is the cheapest, which in our favored land is principally 
corn. The workings of the internal economy of a 
healthy animal, especially an omnivorous animal like 
the fowl, will "balance" the ration by selecting from 
our national grain the nutritive elements required by 
the varying needs of the system. 

Feed millet and wheat for a change, but corn, being 



116 AN EGG FARM. 

the cheapest grain we have, is the proper food for chicks, 
and for laying fowls also, -and you need pay no attention 
to the everlasting hue and cry about this noble grain 
being too oily. It isn't oily enough, and for either man 
or beast is improved by the addition of lard or some 
other form of fat. Ask one of these anti-corn cranks 
to explain the almost universal craving of humanity for 
butter to be eaten with bread. For a negro laborer at 
the south, corn meal, with fat bacon or pork, makes a per- 
fect food, with the addition of a small quantity of fresh 
vegetables or wild fruit, the last as condiments merely, 
or to furnish acids to assist digestion, for they do not 
supply any strictly nutritive elements which the main 
diet lacks. The corn without the fat would be almost 
as incomplete as the fat without the corn. When the 
negroes or poor whites are without pork to accompany 
their universal diet of corn bread, they crave a shorten- 
ing of lard in the latter, and failing to obtain this, some- 
times use the oily kernels of black walnuts, or even the 
oil obtained from certain species of fish. "But fowls 
are not men," we hear some one exclaim. True, but 
both are omnivorous. Fish, flesh, cereals, vegetables 
and fruit are the appropriate food of both; the digestion 
of both is improved by the acid of fresh green stuff, and 
the perfect nourishment of both demands oily food. 

Even in the tropics fat meats are sought by those who 
toil ; bread and fruits will not suffice. Conversely in 
the Arctic regions, although much has been written 
about the fondness of the Esquimaux Indians for oils 
and fats, recent careful observers have stated that if 
these Indians can get lean meat they will eat it in con- 
nection with fat in very nearly the same proportion as is 
usual among their white brethren in temperate zones. 

If it were not for the time and expense involved, corn 
boiled or fried in some form of animal or vegetable oil 
or fat would be the best possible staple for fowls, winter 



THE KINDS OF FOOD. 117 

and summer. But the edicts of labor saving are against 
this diet, as well as somewhat against the use of the 
fresh scraps from the butchers' shops, and chandlers' 
greaves, for the former must be chopped, and the latter 
are pressed in cakes so solid as to need considerable 
preparation before being used. The supplanting of the 
village butcher by the big packing house, moreover, 
makes it impossible to get chandlers' scrap cake in many 
localities, while the feasibility of feeding the packing 
house tankage, which takes its place, has not as yet been 
sufficiently demonstrated. For one thing, it is sold in a 
perfectly dry state and finely ground, so that it keeps 
well and can be fed with very little labor. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

BREEDING AND INCUBATION. 

The proper management of the breeding stock is a 
very important part of the scheme, for there must annu- 
ally be raised a large supply of pullets of the right qual- 
ity. The profits of the establishment depend largely on 
the excellence of the fowls, and as they can be multiplied 
very fast from a chosen few, no pains should be spared 
to secure the very best as a source from which to stock 
the whole farm. There is but one way to do this, and 
that is to keep individual birds in experimental yards in 
order to test their merits, recording the degree of excel- 
lence and the pedigree of the best with as much care as 
would be given to breeding cows or horses. 

We will suppose it is designed to produce a strain of 
Leghorns that shall excel in prolificness, laying at an 
early age, and in other requisites. Procure a pullet 
from A and a cockerel from B, and put them in yard 
No. 1 ; purchase of C and D one bird from each, for 
yard No. 2, and so on, always taking care that no speci- 
mens are obtained from any locality where disease has 
prevailed. If there is any doubt on this matter, quar- 
antine your purchases on premises at a distance from 
your main establishment for two or three weeks. The 
smaller breeding yards are used as experimental yards, 
and to allow each cock a proper number of mates, two 
or more Plymouth Bock pullets, whose eggs can be dis- 
tinguished by their color, are added. Give each Leghorn 
a name or number, and enter in a book all details neces- 
sary for testing progress in improving the breed, such as 

118 



BREEDING AND INCUBATION. 119 

weight, the age at which laying commenced, and the 
yield of eggs during the first year, at the expiration of 
which banish all but the best hens. The second year 
set the eggs of the reserved extra fowls, and keep the 
chickens produced by each pair separate from all others. 

At the age of five or six months, cull out the most prom- 
ising pullets and cockerels, and pair them for testing 
and recording pedigree and prolificness as before. By 
mating the produce of the original birds from A and B 
with the produce of those from C and D, finally the 
four stocks will become blended in one. Proceed in this 
manner a number of years, and when in the course of 
time a very extra prolific and vigorous hen has been 
found, which reached full size and commenced laying 
early, and whose ancestry have excelled in the same 
respects for several generations, as shown by the book, 
then from her eggs cocks are raised from which to breed 
to replenish the main stock of layers at the itinerant 
stations. These cocks are put in the larger breeding 
yards, each with a flock of ten hens, and no accounts 
are kept of the prolificness of individuals among their 
descendants. 

After new stock is introduced to the experimental 
yards, as must be done yearly, care is taken for a series 
of years to avoid breeding akin, and as purchases will be 
made from fanciers who, to fix the conventional points, 
have most likely bred close and impaired strength, cross- 
ing will immediately give a decided increase of vigor. 
Towards the last, however, when sufficient stamina has 
been gained, and the stations are to be stocked, close 
breeding is resorted to, even the mating of brother with 
sisters, which is the closest kind of inbreeding. This is 
to increase the yield of eggs, the philosophy of the mat- 
ter being as follows : Just as a fruit tree girdled or 
severely root pruned will give a profuse yield and then 
die, and as various domestic animals will for a short 



120 AN EGG FA EM. 

time be more prolific after removal to unaccustomed 
climates, so the violent attack on vitality which occurs 
when there is in-and-in breeding is met by an energetic 
attempt of the organism to propagate in unusual num- 
bers and thus maintain its kind. There has been much 
confusion on this point, for while scientific naturalists 
have insisted that no animal can thrive under continued 
close breeding, j)ractical poultry keepers have pointed to 
the prolificness of in-and-in bred fowls as a proof that 
there was no deterioration. The fact is, individual per- 
fection and rapid increase are, to a certain degree, 
incompatible. Under our plan of aiming chiefly to 
secure great quantities of eggs, we purposely give the 
constitution of the birds a shock in order to increase 
fecundity, having first, however, carefully built up, for 
some years, by careful selection and good sanitary con- 
ditions, sufficient strength to withstand the assault. 
This course may appear inconsistent, but experiments 
have shown us that it is correct. 

The Plymouth Eocks are bred in the experimental 
yards with a different basis of selection. The best sit- 
ters, -and those with the shortest legs and plenty of fluffy 
plumage and ample wings, are preferred. Note the 
behavior of the hens that are bringing up chicks, and 
cull out patterns of motherhood and set their eggs. 

In the breeding and experimental yards, the fowls 
must be fed and managed in every respect with the 
greatest care. Over-fattening is to be deprecated above 
all other things, and may be avoided by burying all the 
grain, to make the birds exercise by scratching. The 
supply of grain should be moderate ; meat should be 
given very often in very small quantities, and the allow- 
ance of fresh vegetables should be ample. Eree range 
would be very desirable for all the breeders, but as it is 
impracticable, scrupulous care must be taken to furnish 
artificially natural conditions. Though the birds of the 



BREEDING AND INCUBATION. 121 

laying class in the experimental yards are rated accord- 
ing to their prolificness, yet the test is merely a relative 
one, for they are not forced to profuse laying by stim- 
ulating feed. 

SETTING THE EGGS. 

Vigor and thrift in chickens depend, in the first place, 
upon the quality of the eggs set. Those obtained from 
breeding stock managed as described in the preceding 
section, will hatch strong and healthy chickens, observ- 
ing one precaution. Care should be taken never to set 
eggs laid near the close of the season, when the hens 
have been very prolific, for such will produce chickens 
deficient in vigor. The production of eggs in great 
numbers is, in the best laying breeds, abnormal. The 
wild jungle fowl, in common with all birds in a state of 
nature, lays no more than she can cover, and this is true 
of domestic hens of sitting breeds, that steal their nests. 
It is the daily removal of the eggs by the keeper, and 
the supply of an abundance of nutritious food, that 
causes great prolificness. There are some species of 
wild birds that will produce from thi'ee to ten times 
their usual number of eggs, during a season when their 
food is abundant, if their nests are continually robbed. 
But when hens lay twenty or more per month, for sev- 
eral months, the eggs are impaired. This is one reason 
why chickens hatched in summer are sometimes so defi- 
cient in vigor, compared with those produced in early 
spring. For the sake of economy it is important to 
have as few non-impregnated eggs as possible. Over 
ninety per cent will be impregnated if the breeding 
cocks are strong and sprightly, and no more than ten 
hens are allowed in a flock. It is a good plan to keep 
two cocks for each group of breeding hens, and shut 
them up alternately, one day at a time, in a small but 
comfortable coop, entirely out of sight of the hens. The 



122 AIT EGG FARM. 

eggs should not be kept more than three or four days, 
or ten at the most, before being set. Those laid the 
same day should be given to one hen, so that the whole 
brood may hatch simultaneously, for new-laid eggs 
hatch several hours sooner than those that have been 
laid a considerable time before being set. 

Artificial hatching and rearing are not economical. 
Even if incubators hatch as great a proportion of eggs 
as hens, there is no way of rearing the chickens artifi- 
cially, and securing ventilation, warmth, cleanliness 
and room for exercise, without greater outlay in labor 
and building materials than is necessary when hens are 
employed, provided the rigors of winter are over. The 
cost of fixtures for heating, and of fuel, and of suitable 
contrivances for providing exercise for the young broods, 
maks the plan entirely impracticable, except m case of 
high prices for broilers ; and as for blooded fowls, no 
bird designed for a breeder should ever be reared in a 
brooder. 

The nests of sitters should be made at bottom of damp 
earth, packed to a concave shape. Make the sides steep 
enough so that the eggs will lie close together and so 
that the hen can roll the outside ones towards the center 
easily, but do not pack the earth so dishing that eggs 
will lie two deep in the nest. It is not necessary to 
place them upon the ground, or to sprinkle the eggs 
with water, if this rule is followed. It is proper that 
the eggs should be in some way exposed to moderate 
dampness during incubation, as otherwise too much of 
the water in their composition evaporates. An elevated 
box furnished with nothing but dry litter is not suitable. 
Cover the earth with staw, bruised until pliable, and 
broken short. Long straw is apt to become entangled 
with the feet of the hen, causing breakage of eggs. It 
should not, however, be cut by a machine, because the 
sharp ends of the pieces will come in contact with the 



BREEDING AXD INCUBATION. 123 

skin of the hen, or that of the delicate chickens. In 
very cold weather line the nest with feathers. We have 
successfully hatched eggs by preparing a nest thus, in a 
room where during part of the time of incubation the 
temperature was below zero. Set hens in large numbers 
at a time, having kept some of them upon artificial eggs 
until all are ready. Of course, an entry must be made 
in a book of the family or strain, and other particulars 
of each clutch. 

Examine the eggs after the hen has been upon them 
ten days, by the- well-known method of placing them 
between the hands and attempting to look through them 
at a strong light ; or a better way is to use an egg tester, 
such as is commonly sold by manufacturers of incubators 
and by poultry supply houses in all the large cities. 
Eeturn to the hen only those eggs that appear opaque or 
clouded; those which show clear, orange-colored yolks, 
being unimpregnated, will not hatch, and may be used 
as feed for chickens. 

When hatching is progressing, remove gently once or 
twice the empty shells, that might otherwise overcap 
the unhatched eggs, but further than this do not inter- 
fere, as a chicken worth hatching will contrive to get 
itself hatched. Sometimes the membrane surrounding 
the chick is so tough that the prisoner cannot get out, 
and in such a case the attendant can afford assistance, 
it is true, but apart from the objection of taking too 
much time to putter in this way, there is another trouble, 
namely : By saving chicks from tough membraned 
eggs you perpetuate a tough membraned breed. When 
dealing with the pedigreed chickens and selecting the 
choicest specimens to put in special broods by them- 
selves, take those which not only get into the world 
without any trouble, but those which hatch out and 
become strong and lively the earliest. Let the chicks 
remain in the nest forty-eight hours without being fed, 



124 AX EGG FARM. 

allowing the hen, meanwhile, water, and a little corn, 
just a few kernels, placed in dishes by the nest. When 
removed to the coops, put in each double brood thirty 
chickens — less if it is cold weather, and forty sometimes 
in summer. 

The large lice that often infest the bodies of sitting 
hens will leave for the young chicks and gather on their 
heads, unless care is taken. This trouble must be abso- 
lutely prevented. The liquid lice-killer, of late inven- 
tion must be applied freely to the edges of the nest 
several times during the first fortnight of the sitting 
term, the wirework over the top and front of the nests 
being covered, meanwhile, with paper or cloth as closely 
as may be without stifling the sitters. Or powdered 
sulphur, if bought at wholesale rates, will prove cheap 
enough, and is not dangerous to the sitters. No cover- 
ing of the nests is necessary when this is used, and it 
can be applied during the third week if desired, or at 
any other time. Two thorough applications will utterly 
destroy the enemy, an interval of four clays being allowed 
between. Use two full handfuls each time. No matter 
how much lies at the bottom of the nest and on the 
straw and earth at its sides, it will not injure the hen or 
her newly hatched chicks. Apply it at night to the 
hen, and then keep her confined until the latter part of 
the next day, so that the fumes of the sulphur can take 
full effect. When you begin, disturb the hen slightly 
so that she will bristle her feathers, and then from a 
dredge box dust the sulphur down to every portion of 
her skin, from head to foot, not omitting a liberal dose 
upon all the eggs, so that the under parts of her body 
may get full benefit. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

MANAGEMENT OF SITTERS. 

A special management of sitters in a mild climate, with 
mechanical contrivances for minimizing labor, has already 
been given, and we will now describe the management 
of the incubating hens kept in the buildings represented 
in Figs. 21 and 22, and adapted to cooler latitudes. 
This building, like the one for the southwest, secures 
plenty of room for the sitters to move about in when off 
their nests. It cannot be too strongly insisted upon, 
that it is natural for a sitting fowl to run about very 
actively when she has left her nest. She will always 
make the most vigorous use of her legs on such occa- 
sions, when allowed full range. 

This extraordinary activity, in comparison with which 
the movements of a laying fowl appear moderate and 
sedate, keeps her in health and is particularly necessary 
in order that the bowels shall remain in good condition. 
"Without a great deal of running hither and yon, your 
sitting birds will be afflicted with spells of constipation 
and looseness by turns, and will foul the nests, that is, 
a considerable per cent of them will, not all, and make 
so disgusting a mess that you will wish you had never 
seen a sitting hen in your life. 

The management of sitters kept in quarters shown in 
Fig. 22, will be understood by reference to Fig. 40, 
which gives a nest rack viewed from the front, there 
being three tiers of nests with an alighting board under 
each tier. This rack may be seen in the center of Fig. 22. 
The nests are guarded against the depredations of rats 

125 



126 



AN EGG FARM. 



by the fine wire netting, as described. The use of the 
coarse netting that alternates with the fine, is as follows : 
Half the labor of managing chickens is saved by confin- 
ing in the same coop two hens with their broods. They 
will agree perfectly, if well acquainted beforehand. We 
take a hint from nature here ; such wild birds as live 
chiefly on the ground sometimes incubate and lead their 
broods in company. Wild turkeys, and their tame 
descendants as well, are an instance in point. While 
sitting, adjoining hens form a particular acquaintance 




FIG. 40. MANNER OF NUMBERING NESTS FOR SITTERS. 



through the coarse meshes of the netting, and, at the 
same time, they cannot interfere with each other, or roll 
the eggs from one nest to another. 

Without a special system of management, a consider- 
able number of sitting hens cannot incubate and feed in 
the same apartment without confusion, but by the fol- 
lowing plan each is made to know her own nest and 
return to it after feeding. In the first place, the laying- 
hens, before offering to sit, are induced to choose nests 
scattered evenly through the whole building, by properly 
distributing nest eggs and keeping half the nests closed. 
The nests on both sides of the house are divided verti- 
cally into three sections, one at each end of the room 



MANAGEMENT OE SITTERS. 127 

and one at the center, by painting each division a special 
color — the center black, and the ends respectively red 
and blue. The contrast assists the fowls very much in 
determining their places. 

No more than three pairs of sitters should be allowed 
to each division, or eighteen clutches on each side of the 
building. The six birds belonging in the middle divi- 
sion remember their places very readily, because they are 
so far from either end. To prevent those at the ends 
from making mistakes, as soon as the laying season com- 
mences, one end wall of the room is covered with straw, 
or evergreen boughs, and the other left bare. A few 
yards of cheap cotton cloth or some old newspapers will 
do to mark a distinction. All birds, wild or domesti- 
cated, possess a keen sense of locality, and a few neigh- 
boring objects enable them to recognize their nests. The 
nests that are used for hatching are numbered by affix- 
ing movable labels, and every sitter is distinguished by 
having a feather or two painted, the color showing her 
division, and the position of the mark, upon her head, 
body, or tail, signifying a number corresponding to that 
of her nest. This enables the attendant to correct mis- 
takes of the birds (which will, however, be rare) before 
fastening them in daily. The colors show distinctly 
upon the white ground of the feathers. This plan 
appears somewhat whimsical, but it is simple and con- 
venient. Figure 40 shows the numbers on the side of a 
room, arranged as if for eighteen clutches, the nests not 
numbered being for the use of laying fowls in the mean- 
time. The shading represents the three different colors 
of the divisions. The sitters are assigned places two by 
two as above stated, and each of a pair of nests and each 
of the occupants receives the same number. Only three 
numerals are necessary to designate three dozen nests 
in all, in one house. 

The incubating hens should be fed early in the morn- 



128 AN" EGG FARM. 

ing, before any of the others are ready to lay. Those 
not sitting are shut into the yard; the large doors of 
coarse wi rework, that prevent hens from roosting on 
the alighting boards at night, are raised at one side of 
the room only, and the pieces of wire cloth before the 
separate entrances to the nests of the sitting hens are 
removed and placed in front of the nests frequented by 
the layers. Next, grain is thrown upon the ground in 
view of all the sitters on that side of the room, when a 
call to which they are accustomed will cause nearly all 
to leave their nests. The laggards that refuse to leave 
are lifted from the nests and placed on the ground. 
The attendant must not take hold of the fowl. Push 
the hand gently under her and then spread out the fin- 
gers and lift her slowly off the eggs. There is a knack 
about it which is quickly learned, and, to beat artificial 
incubation all hollow, it must not be forgotten that our 
sitters are of a selected strain and very quiet. When 
they are off, the large doors are lowered and the hens 
are left from one-quarter to three-quarters of an hour, 
according to the weather, while the poulterer is repeat- 
ing the operation at the other buildings. When the 
hens are off, inspect every nest to detect broken eggs, or 
anything else amiss. The sitters upon one side are all 
admitted to their nests at once, by raising the large wire 
doors, and then shut in safe from rats or the intrusions 
of laying hens,, by the separate pieces of wire cloth. 
Kepeat the operation at the nests on the opposite side 
of the house. 

The houses for sitters should be located near the begin- 
ning and the finish of the route the wagon takes in 
attending to the main laying stock, thus making it con- 
venient to work in the sitting department at intervals 
through the day and give the sitters a long spell off in 
warm weather. On very warm days, they should be off 
the nests from one to three hours on a stretch. In very 



MANAGEMENT OF SITTEES. 129 

cold weather, from three to fire minutes will do, and in 
medium weather, anywhere from ten minutes to thirty, 
forty-five or sixty minutes. Whenever the attendant is 
examining nests, or doing other work in the houses for 
sitters, he should operate the hammers and feed shelves 
as directed under the head of Houses for Sitters, Chaj)- 
ter VIII. The sitters will do much running besides, on 
their own account. The layers, which are in the same 
runways and buildings occupied by the sitters, feed at 
the same time as the latter, and the layers have numer- 
ous opportunities to feed, while each batch of sitters has 
one opportunity only. This is all right, for the sitters 
should be rather sparingly fed, in order to keep them 
keen and eager, so that they may leave their nests 
promptly at feeding time and not have to be removed by 
hand. Whenever the feed shelves are operated, there 
should be only the very smallest possible quantity of 
grain jarred down, consisting of millet or very fine 
cracked corn. The object is to confirm the habit, which 
all the birds will have, of running back and forth to see 
what is good at the other terminus of the yards between 
whiles, when the attendant is not present. 

9 



CHAPTEE XV. 

MANAGEMENT OF YOUNG CHICKENS. 

In keeping poultry on a large scale, there is no one 
thing more important, or more difficult to manage, than 
the chicken department. A failure in the yearly supply 
of pullets, with which to recruit the stock of layers, 
would be fatal to the whole plan. It is quite an easy 
matter to raise nearly every chick of a hardy breed, when 
there are but a few upon an extensive range, but it is 
the reverse when we are desirous of rearing several hun- 
dreds upon an acre, and there is, practically, no insect 
forage at all. If there are persons who consider the 
occupation of a poulterer as "small potatoes/' believing 
that it needs less thought and skill than to manage a 
cotton mill or a mercantile establishment, or horses and 
cattle, let them try once to raise chickens by the thou- 
sand, without losing money, and find the need of keep- 
ing their wits as sharp as in more pretentious kinds of 
business. Yet, all difficulties may be surmounted by 
thorough management. 

To have strong chickens, it is necessary, while devel- 
oping the desired strain, to avoid breeding akin, and to 
keep the breeding stock in a condition as near to normal 
as possible, securing for them sun, air and exercise, and 
avoiding a pampering diet. The greater the number of 
eggs produced by a fowl, the less vitality there will be in 
each, therefore the first only of a laying should be set. 
Early chickens are the most certain to live, and this is 
because force is stored up in the parent before laying 
commences, sufficient to endow the first eggs or chickens 

130 



MANAGEMENT OF YOUNG CHICKENS. 131 

with plenty of vigor, while later, the abnormal or artifi- 
cial prolifieness impairs the eggs. In spite of the uncon- 
genial weather, March-hatched chickens are stronger 
than those produced in April, and the latter, in turn, 
are reared with greater ease than those hatched in May. 

But, after attending to the above considerations, the 
chickens being hatched and assigned quarters, their 
thrift then depends chiefly on their diet. Of course, 
they must be kept clean, dry, free from vermin, and 
protected from other enemies, quadruped and biped, 
and be allowed space for exercise in the sun and open 
air ; but all these things will not suffice, unless animal 
food is artificially provided as a substitute for the insects 
they would obtain if there were but few chickens on the 
premises. True enough, chickens can be reared on 
grain and vegetables alone, because they are like man, 
omnivorous. Children can be reared without eating any 
meat at all, but both men and fowls will do better with 
animal food than without it. Butchers' meat, such as 
calves' and sheep's plucks, are even better than insects 
for young chicks, provided they are fed plentifully, yet 
only a very little at a time, and care is taken to alter- 
nate with grain and green vegetable food. Chandlers' 
greaves may be used for chickens, if very nice and sweet 
— the article varies much in quality. They are very 
cheap feed, cheaper than the fresh bits from the butcher, 
but not as good for chickens as the latter. There must 
be constant vigilance in supplying animal food regularly 
and systematically. The young of birds in a wild state 
are given an animal diet, even in cases when, as they 
reach maturity, they live upon seeds. 

The young of our domestic birds cannot do their very 
best upon grain and vegetables alone, because such 
things cannot be digested and assimilated fast enough 
by them to meet the great demands for nourishment 
caused by their rapid growth. Nature has provided 



132 AX EGG FARM. 

that the young of all birds shall mature and become 
fledged with wonderful rapidity, in order that the period 
of their helplessness, when they are likely to be preyed 
upon by their numerous enemies, shall be short. The 
formation of the coat of feathers, which succeeds the 
downy covering with which they emerge from the shell, 
demands a quick and certain supply of nutritive mate- 
rials, and, in the case of domesticated species, the young 
are obliged at the same time to nourish the growth of 
bodies which, owing to the artificial treatment man has 
subjected their parents to for many generations, tend to 
an abnormal size. The fledging period is a critical one, 
and the feeding, from the time of incubation until the 
wing and tail feathers are fairly developed, should all be 
contrived with a view to assist the digestive organs in 
changing just as much easily assimilated material as pos- 
sible into an abundance of good, rich blood. It will 
not do to wait until the time of the most rapid feather- 
ing, and then begin to allow a generous diet, but the 
systems of the young chicks must be prepared in advance, 
by being stored with nutriment in every cell and tissue. 
For the first few clays after incubation, feed the yolks 
of eggs slightly cooked by being dropped, in hot water, 
not spoiled by being hard boiled. Mix these with an 
ecpial quantity of the crumbs of corn cake, made by bak- 
ing a dough of Indian meal and milk. The clear eggs, 
that were put under sitters and tested out, will give you a 
supply of yolks for this purpose. As soon as the chicks 
are five or six days old, begin gradually to substitute boiled 
plucks and livers, run through a meat cutter, in place 
of the egg yolks, and the Indian meal may be cooked as 
a thick mush, and to stimulate appetite by variety, add 
sometimes wheat bran and ground oats. Also, cracked 
corn and wheat screenings, raw, may be introduced. All 
they will eat of tender grass, chopped fine, and boiled 
potatoes, nicely mashed, should be given. The grass 



MANAGEMENT OF YOUNG CHICKENS. 133 

may, of course, be discontinued when the birds are 
strong enough to pluck it for themselves. Millet seed 
is excellent for young chicks, and for fowls of all ages 
for that matter, but it is more expensive than corn°in 
proportion to the nutrition it contains; the latter, 
cracked, and the meal and also the coarser particles 
sifted out, is the main reliance for encouraging young 
chickens to range for the sake of exercise a considerable 
distance from the coops containing the mother hens. 

Occasionally, the broadcast sower should make a trip 
parallel to the row of small chicken coops at a distance of 
three or four to eight or ten rods, according to the age 
of the chicks, and scatter a slight sprinkling of fine 
cracked corn. It is not necessary to do this every dav, 
for the remembrance of what they have previously found 
will cause them to ramble freely, especially as there will ■ 
be a few insects on the range, even if not many. It is 
very important that the chicken coops shall be set in a 
single row and at a distance from other fowls, so that 
all the insect forage possible may be secured for them, 
and, at the same time, they will be encouraged to ram- 
ble far and wide, exercise and employment of their 
natural hunting faculties being as beneficial as the forage 
itself. If you double up the rows, even if they are 50 
or 100 ft. apart, the chicks will not do as well. Locate 
the row near your crops, for they will clo no damage 
before weaning. Crops grow insects ; insects grow chicks. 
The chicks of the main laying stock should be kept at 
a place separate from the selected pedigree chicks and 
those of the breed of sitters, because, as the former grow 
toward maturity, they should gradually receive feed more 
forcing and stimulating than the latter. The adult 
fowls designed for breeders should be fed sparingly, and 
forced to literally scratch hard for a living ; the sitters 
must be allowed a stimulating diet in winter, to induce 
them to lay so as to be ready to sit early in the season, 



134 



AX EGG FARM. 




FIG. 41. LAID B\" HENS. 



but during the summer and fall their feed should be 
such as to restrain rather than promote laying, while 
the fowls of the main stock should be crowded all their 
lives without any intermission, by plying them with a 
diet growing richer and more stimu- 
lating, because containing a greater 
proportion of chandlers' scraps, or 
an equivalent in some other kind of 
animal food, the older they become. 
Cayenne pepper is the cheapest and 
best stimulant, with ground mus- 
tard and ginger for a change. Be- 
gin with a very little, and increase 
the quantity gradually, and be sure 
to have these fiery condiments mixed evenly and uni- 
formly through the mass of soft feed, by first scalding 
them in boiling water and mixing the infusion, dregs 
and all, with meal, mashed .potatoes, or whatever the 
material of which the mess consists. 

The chicks of the breed the main laying stock com- 
prises,are all that receive the indirect feeding previously 
described, which is another reason for locating them at 
a part of the ground distant from the pedigree chicks 
and sitting breed chicks, but all, irrespective of breed, 
may be housed at night in the "A coop," Fig. 33, a pat- 
tern which the writer's experience of over forty years 
of use has not enabled him to improve, cost being con- 
sidered. To secure its full advantages, however, it must 
be used properly. The chief foes of young chicks are 
wet and rats. Unless the coop has a floor, the hen will 
scratch holes in the ground, which a hard rain will fill 
with water, and unless the floor is movable it cannot be 
readily cleaned. To arrange for the night, to avoid 
rats and at the same time gi^e air, slide the coop toward 
the small rear door before pegging down the lid, a, as 
previously directed. This will give a crack at the edge 



MANAGEMENT OF YOUNG CHICKENS. 



135 



of the floor at the rear of the coop and also at the front, 
too small for rats to enter, and the animal heat will 
cause cold air to flow in at the very bottom of the coop, 
while comparatively warm air will escape near the top. 
While the small A coops are good enough for ordinary 
use, yet some early chicks of the classes of breeders and 
sitters, which are to be reared under the most favorable 
auspices possible, are housed at scattered stations in the 
cellars vacated in early spring by the early-hatched pul- 
lets, and so have the advantage of a wide range. The 
house for pullets, a description of which has been given, 
is illustrated by Fig. 13. When this pullet house is 
moved off from the cellars, the latter are covered by 
some of the earth platforms, Fig. 6, a glazed sash being 




FIG. 42. EGGS LAID BY PULLETS. 



temporarily hinged to one, after removing some boards, 
for a door. The platforms are laid two deep, as shown 
in Fig. 48. When the chicks are old enough to run in 
and out of the underground passage in the wall of earth 
in the foreground of this cut, they are restricted at first 



136 



AX EGG FAKM. 



to a small, lath covered pen, until they have learned the 
way, and afterward allowed to range where they choose, 
the mother hen being confined as before. No hen can 
ever be allowed to run at large with her brood, beneficial 
as the freedom is to her and her younglings, for, under 




FIG. 43. SHELTER FOR CHICKENS. 



this system, the practice and regularity cannot be secured 
at all times and in all changes of weather, which are 
essential in managing a large plant. 

Shade is very essential in summer, for both fowls and 
chicks, especially for the latter, and is provided by prop- 
ping on stakes some of the earth platforms, otherwise 
idle, as shown at A, Fig. 43. The basement parts of 



MANAGEMENT OF YOUNG CHICKENS. 



137 



the small coops, Fig. 36, not needed for weaned chicks 
till later in the summer, can also be. propped up and 
covered with boards or straw, as at B, Fig. 43. In the 
foreground of this cut, E is a larger shelter from the 
sun, such as will answer for either chicks or layers, at 
the itinerant stations, made by propping a winter dust- 
bin, B, Fig. 11, in a slanting position, nailing lightly 



&~sfe 




FIG. 44. TEMPORARY SHELTERS. 



a few boards or poles across and thatching with the 
straw mats that were used on the roofs of winter houses. 
Spare floors to chicken coops, Fig. 34, may be arranged 
as at C, Fig. 44, and in the same cut D represents a 
shade made of rails and straw that were used in winter 



138 AN EGG EAKM. 

quarters, Fig. 11, with brush or cornstalks added to 
keep the wind from blowing the straw away. 

"While speaking of shade for young chicks, it may be 
said here that for shade for layers at the colony stations, 
bins, E, Fig. 43, may be drawn upon the ground by the 
team, occasionally, so as to never be very far from the 
building when the latter is shifted, and some of the earth 
platforms are moved about for the same purpose, when 
not employed in the dry earth harvest. By using plat- 
forms at one station, straw mat screens at another, and 
movable booths of evergreen boughs at a third, neigh- 
boring premises are made to look unlike. In this way, 
all the various fixtures in the whole establishment are 
kept in use summer and winter, and chickens and grown 
fowls are sheltered from sun, wind and rain under 
structures that afford a great deal of ground room, which 
is what counts, but they are low like the houses, and, 
therefore, made with but little lumber. 



CHAPTER XVI. 



ADDITIONAL BUILDINGS. 

The building which contains the cook room must also 
store the grain and vegetables, where they will be handy, 
and dry earth is kept at the same place, because, in con- 
nection with other apartments, a receptacle may be most 
economically constructed, which shall admit of labor- 
saving in unloading and reloading stuff which is so heavy. 

The south eleva- 
tion of the granary 
and cook house, Fig. 
45, shows the manner 
of making a "side- 
hill barn" on nearly 
level ground, the ob- 
ject being to drive 
the wagon containing 
dry earth to as high 
a point in the build- 
ing as possible. The 
driveway is made of 
masonry and earth, 
excepting near the 
building, where a 
wooden bridge is sub- 
stituted, shown also 
in Fig. 46. A corre- 
sponding driveway at the north end, shown in Fig. 46, 
enables the team to pass out without backing. The dot- 

139 




FIG. 45. SOUTH ELEVATION. 



140 



A2ST EGG FARM. 



ted lines in Fig. 46 indicate the floors, A, A, which fol- 
low the inclination of the driveways until the level space, 




B, is gained at the center, where is a trap, 0, through 
which the earth falls into a hopper-shaped chamber, as 
mentioned on Page 32. For filling the corners there are 



ADDITIONAL BUILDINGS. 141 

additional trap-doors at D, D. This chamber or bin 
slopes at the bottom, the position of a part of which is 
shown by the dotted lines, E, E, which converge at the 
point, F, where is a slide-door, through which the con- 
tents are discharged to be carried to the stations, the 
wagon being backed for the latter purpose through the 
doors, 67, 67. West of the room where the dry earth is 
discharged into the wagon, is a bin for potatoes, etc., 
built of thick stone walls, to prevent freezing. This 
bin is filled from above by driving a load of roots to the 
floor, B, and allowing them to slide down an inclined 
plane. The cook room, with which the window, H, 
communicates, occupies the north part of the lower 
story, of which Fig. 47, Page 142, gives a ground plan. 
I, cook room, with its outside (north) door, J. K, 
grain bin, entered at the door, L. The root bin is at M, 
and entered at the door, N. The cook room is used in 
winter as a place in which to dress fowls, and contains 
also a work bench with tools. The cooking apparatus 
is at 0. There is no chimney proper, but only a chim- 
ney top supported by strong timbers near the peak. A 
brick flue rises from perpendicularly as far as the 
eaves, terminated by an ordinary stovepipe, which con- 
ducts the smoke to a large drum in the upper room, and 
from thence to the chimney top. In this way the garret 
is warmed for drying feathers, or for rearing a few win- 
ter chicks if desired. As shown in Fig. 45, the south 
wall of this nursery apartment is well glazed. The 
dimensions of the building are 36x30 ft., with 18 ft. 
posts. 

Two buildings remain to be described. Figure 49 rep- 
resents a hospital ; that is, a building that can be used 
as such in an emei'gency. It is 14 ft. wide, 60 ft. long, 
and 8 ft. high at the peak. There is a passage 2 1-2 ft. 
wide, running its whole length the north side, which 
communicates with the twelve rooms into which the 



142 



AN EGG FARM. 



building is divided by wire partitions. The glazed roof 
is upon the south side. There is an outside door (not 
shown in the figure) in the north wall, opposite the 



! 
I 


--36 fr-- 

M 


K 




1 




I 


1 


k 
? 

i 




i 
| 

V 




o| 





FIG. 47. GROUND PLAN. 



chimney, for convenience in attending the fire. The 
building is warmed by coal, a fire-chamber of brick and 
a boiler and hot-water pipes being used. 

It- is injurious to animals to breathe the fumes that 
will escape when it is attempted to warm a room by 
passing a smoke-pipe through it, leading from a coal 
fire, unless the chimney is quite high, causing a strong 
draft, which is one reason for preferring hot water, and 
another is that the risk of overheating is not so great 
(for water cannot be heated above a certain temperature 
without turning to vapor or steam), and a third reason 
is that less fuel is needed with hot water than without. 
The original cost of hot-water fixtures is double, it is 
true, but they are kept in repair with hardly the expense 
of a cent, and cause a saving of fully half the fuel. The 
ventilator at the top of the building has immovable 
blinds at its sides, and horizontal door's at its bottom, 
opening upwards, and closing by their own weight, 



ADDITIONAL BUILDINGS. 



143 



moved by means of cords and pulleys, regulate the egress 
of air. 

At the north side of the building are a number of 
small windows, covered with ordinary adjustable blinds, 
for the admission of fresh air, and in summer the doors 
at both ends of the structure may be opened, as in the 
illustration, and the windows in the roof should be 
partly curtained. This building is used for early chick- 
ens, and numerous other purposes, it not being expected 
to have much occasion to take care of sick fowls, for the 
true plan is to prevent disease by inducing constant 
exercise by scratching, by allowing sun, air, good food, 
and breeding from vigorous stock. 

Never have any hospital at all on your premises for 
birds affected with roup, cholera or other serious epi- 




FKJ. 48.— QUARTERS FOR EARLY CHICKENS. 

demic or infectious disease. In time, it is confidently 
believed, some preventive, by inoculation or otherwise, 
will be provided by science to ward off the two dire 



144 



AN EGG FARM. 



plagues, chicken cholera and roup ; but till that happy 
era arrives the inflexible rule for treatment of diseased 
birds should be : Keep a sharp hatchet, and use when 
the disease first appears. The foundation principle 
must be to secure and maintain health and vigor. In 
introducing new blood, it had best be done by procuring 
eggs for hatching. But in the rare cases when it may 
be advisable to add live birds to the breeding stock, they 




FIG. 49.— HOSPITAL FOB EGG FARM. 

should first be quarantined at a distance from the main 
premises and frequently and carefully inspected, before 
being added to the flocks. 

Of late, great advances have been made in the matter 
of destroying the parasitic vermin on fowls, and these 
pests will never again prove the terror to poultry men 
that they once were. The mites that infest the nests 
and perches, we have long known how to prevent. 
During sixteen consecutive years of fowl keeping in 



ADDITIONAL BUILDINGS. 145 

Nebraska, not one of the minute vermin, the so-called 
"little red spider lice," has been found on the perches 
in the writer's fowl houses. Also the scaly leg parasite, 
while not yet entirely eradicated, has been readily con- 
trolled. But the large vermin, which cling to the 
bodies of the adult fowls, have, in years past, proved 
obstinate, unless, indeed, Persian insect powder was 
applied in quantity too expensive for ordinary use. But 
now, thanks to the discovery of the modern cheap liquid 
lice killers, the bodies of the birds need no longer be the 
hosts of these disgusting, creeping things. There is no 
such thing as spontaneous generation of lice, as every 
well informed person knows nowadays, and the goal we 
propose as attainable is to eradicate entirely parasitic 
vei-min from a business stock of poultry, by thorough 
and persistent quarantine and treatment of the new pur- 
chased fowls before introduction to the breeding yards, 
thus keeping the aforesaid pest from restocking. 
10 



CHAPTER XVII. 

THE INTENSIVE PLAN. 

The condensed or intensive plan is to the itinerant 
colony or extensive system of poultry keeping what a 
greenhouse is to ordinary farming. In the former, as 
many fowls or chicks as practicable are yarded in a small 
space and also kept much of the time under a roof, 
while in the latter, comparatively few are allowed to the 
acre of ground and they are kept, for the most part, 
without yards, and never under a roof when it can 
be avoided. 

During the last quarter of a century, the interest in 
pure bred fowls has been wonderful, and the money 
spent in disseminating breeds enormous in amount. 
Poultry associations and poultry exhibitions have multi- 
plied and the hen fever has spread like wild fire. Mil- 
lions of eggs of pure bred birds, for hatching purposes, 
have been sold and shipped to every corner of the land. 
But among the results have been disappointment, cha- 
grin, and loss immeasurable. Thousands and tens of 
thousands of dollars have been squandered. Though 
the use of the scratching bin or shed has been well 
understood, and though it has been very generally 
provided of late years, it has proved impracticable for 
the ordinary fancier to mix the grain and straw often 
enough to induce the needful amount of exercise. He 
cannot stand around all day to secure the exercise of a 
few fowls, while if the large-scale man goes the rounds 
repeatedly to his hundreds of flocks, with rake or pitch- 
fork in one hand and a basket of grain in the other, and 

146 



THE INTENSIVE PLAN. 



147 



opens and shuts numbers of doors, the labor involved 
will intercept all or most of the profits. 

The experience of the writer is corroborated by that 
of a great crowd of poultry men, to the effect that yarded 
fowls, as they have been, not as they might be, are fail- 
ures as regards hatching and rearing purposes. Such a 
yard as is usually provided is a delusion and a snare. 
For a few generations, enough chickens can be hatched 
and reared to "keep the breed along," but if the young 




FIG. 51.— TEDDER FOR STIRREXG LITTER.— (SEE PAGE 20.) 



as well as the adult birds are confined, the end is exter- 
mination, unless, as is, happily, generally the case, the 
birds are allowed range a part of the year, or resort is 
had to a farm station for an intermediate generation or 
two, to restore wasted vitality. 

Selling eggs at long prices for hatching from fowls 
yarded in the usual manner is an offense. For twenty 
years and longer, while yards have been common, the 
same old cry has been repeated : "The season has been 
bad for hatching. " But every season always will be a 
bad one when the layers take insufficient exercise. It 



148 



AN EGG FARM. 



does not need that the breeding stock should be actually 
sick, in order to impress a feeble and degenerate condi- 
tion on the eggs. The fowls may be in apparently per- 
fect health, yet their eggs may have become impaired. 

The following, from a late issue of The California 
Poultry Tribune, would have been appropriate any and 
every season since the advent of pure bred fowls in the 




FIG. 52.— THE HARVEST. 

United States caused the enclosed poultry yards to super- 
sede the open range enjoyed by the birds of the former 
generations of poultry keepers : 

"Eggs, as a rule, hatched but poorly this last season, and I think it 
a general complaint throughout the country. There seemed to be lack 
of fertility of eggs, and chicks that managed to get out of the shell 
appeared weak, lacked vitality ; in consequence, early show specimens 
are scarce and will bring good prices for the lucky owners." 

The non-hatching has been hastily attributed to the 
weather, but the weather never hinders the hen which 
runs at large and steals her nest and is actively engaged 
the greater part of the day in foraging for a living, from 
hatching twelve or thirteen chicks out of a nestful of 
thirteen eggs. The feed has been another scapegoat. Every 
combination of animal food, green stuff and cereals has 



THE INTENSIVE PLAN. 149 

been tried, but no ration has been found that will neu- 
tralize the bad effects which the lack of exercise of the 
laying birds produces on their eggs. 

In the first edition of " An Egg Farm," the impor- 
tance of inducing exercise by scratching was inculcated 
for the first time in print. The reader is reminded that 
poultry literature is mostly of a very modern date. 
There have been, down to the present time, about two 
hundred books and pamphlets printed on poultry, in the 
English language, but when An Egg Farm was first 
published, a small but excellent poultry book by Wright, 
another by Geyelin, and a few other books, very meager 
ones, comprised all the works on fowl keeping which 
had then attained any considerable circulation, and 
nowhere had the importance of scratching, for the sake 
of exercise, been mentioned — though the experience of 
people with flower beds had, for long centuries previous, 
shown that the hen is, by nature, a scratching animal, 
as inveterate in parting the soil as is a duck in parting 
the water, and more so, in some cases, since the fond- 
ness for swimming has been bred out of some strains of 
Pekin ducks, by withholding bathing jnrivileges from 
them for many consecutive generations.' Since our first 
recommendation, in the original edition of An Egg Farm, 
as above stated, to furnish a scratching pile or scratch- 
ing bin, the modern voluminous fowl literature of the 
country, including the poultry columns in the numerous 
agricultural periodicals, has reiterated the advice until 
fowl keepers have become well indoctrinated on this point. 

But, while the use of horserake and hay tedder, for 
the free range colony system, was pointed out in the 
first edition, no better way was shown for mixing the 
grain and straw, in yards or buildings, than to do it by 
hand. We described the best way we then knew. The 
advent since, of simple mechanical apparatus, contrived 
by the author, to accomplish the mixing, constitutes a 



150 



AH EGG FARM. 



revolution in intensive poultry keeping. By the use of 
this invention, the greatest objections to keeping poul- 
try in confinement disappear, and by means of the new- 
system yarded birds produce strongly vitalized eggs, 
that hatch well and make healthy, vigorous chicks. Now, 
even in quite narrow quarters, both the parent stock and 
the young chicks can be made to take as much exercise 
as they naturally do when running at large, and more, 
in fact. The apparatus is to birds in confinement what 
the wheel is to a squirrel in a cage. 

As we have pointed out, it is utterly impracticable to 
mix straw and feed together by hand often enough to 




FIG. 53.— WEEDEE AND SOIL STIBEING IMPLEMENT. 



keep the flock of fowls well employed. It must be done 
often or it will not amount to much, and it must also be 
doue right ; that is, there must be a correct proportion 
between the quantity of grain and the quantity of straw. 
If too much straw is used, the fowls become discouraged 



THE INTENSIVE PLAN. 151 

and will not work at all, and if too much grain is used, 
their appetite is soon satiated and they become listless 
and inactive thereafter for the remainder of the day. 
When a judicious scratching pile has been made, for 
young chicks or old birds, no matter which, it will be 
found that they will work it over in good thorough style 
in just about twenty minutes. A device for mixing the 
grain and straw automatically is evidently needed, so 
that it can be done often and labor saved. 



CHAPTEE XVIII. 



THE EXERCISER. 



We have already shown some simple contrivances for 
inducing fowls to run, in the few cases under the exten- 
sive system where it was necessary or convenient to 
employ yards or runways, but to induce them to scratch 
is another matter, which becomes very important under 
the intensive system, where yarding is the rule and open 
range the exception. While formerly one attendant 
could properly manage hundreds of yarded fowls, he can 
now tend thousands by means of the new machine, 
which is called the Exerciser. 

In its invention, the problem was to devise a recepta- 
cle, suspended over the straw, to hold grain enough for 
a day, or for several days, if desired, inaccessible to rats 
and mice, and to discharge a little and often upon the 
straw beneath ; for, as stated, if too much is distributed 
at-a time, the birds will become cloyed and. cease work- 
ing, and if too little is dropped they will also cease, 
because they become discouraged. 

The dropper or distributer, which is more accurate 
and precise than the feed shelf already described, and is, 
therefore, particularly adapted to feeding chicks in 
brooders, is constructed as follows : Let e, Eig. 58, rep- 
resent a strip of tin, 3 ft.xS in. ; a is a strip of wire 
cloth, 3 ft. x3 5-8 in., with mesh 8 to the inch; b, c, 
and d are strips of wire cloth of the same length and 
width as e, and b has mesh 10 to the inch, c has 12 and 
d 14 to the inch. All these may be ordered at any hard- 
ware store. Figure 59 shows these strips, a, b, c, d, 

152 



THE EXERCISER. 



153 



and e, all soldered together in a regular gradation, 
according to sizes, the finest mesh being soldered to the 
tin. Let e lap over d, and d lap over c, and so on ; no 
need of soldering continuously— a drop of solder every 







00 






4++H 


KB 






gj 










H 
H 

3 


P 


[I 


W4i 


-ill, ii iiiilfe 


S 


llmll 


ATF 


frnr 


ttti i 1 1 i 1 1 i r 


¥ 






6 in. will do. There is a little knack in soldering such 
material. Press the strips flat on a floor or board, allow- 
ing each to lap at one edge 1-4 in. over its neighbor. 
You hold the wire cloth down firmly, by pressing end- 



154 



AK" EGG FARM. 



wise with a small stick, close by where the solder is put, 
so that the Wire cannot spring, while another person 
does the soldering. In three seconds the solder will 
chill, and you move your stick 5 or 6 in. to the 
next point. 

Figure 61 shows one of the end pieces to the dropper 
or feed cylinder. It may be either octagonal, square or 




FIG. 59. STRIPS SOLDERED TOGETHER. 



circular, and if of the latter shape, should be five and 
three-quarters inches in diameter, being cut from a seven- 
eighths inch board. It has a hole, /, in the center, to 
receive an iron shaft, consisting of a half-inch iron pipe. 
The shaft may be of any length desired, and to it may 
be attached as many cylinders as needed to feed a row of 
separate flocks in a long, narrow house. Figure 60 
shows how the tin and wire of Fig. 59 are fastened to 



THE EXERCISER. 



155 




the end piece, Fig. 61. In 
Fig. 60, a represents the tin 
which is tacked closely at 
the bottom of the cylinder, 
but flares out into a flange 
at a. Above a, there is an 
open space, through which 
the cylinder is charged with 
grain. The flange assists in 
putting in the proper quan- 
tity quickly, the grain slid- 
ing down, of course, so as to 
rest on the tin at the un- 
derside of the cylinder. In 
Fig. 60, the cylinder is shown 
in correct position for fill- 
ing. The cylinders are fast- 
ened to the shaft so as to 
move with it, not on it. 
The grain should be in the 
form of small particles of 
assorted sizes, from the di- 
mensions of a pinhead to a 
kernel of wheat. Cracked 
corn with the meal sifted 
out is excellent. 

The cylinder should be 
made to perform only about 
a hundredth of a revolution 
at a time, the motion, at 
first, after charging with 
grain, being in the direction 
to raise the tin upward, con- 
sequently the millet, wheat 
and cracked corn will come 
in contact first with the fine 



156 



A1ST EGG FARM. 




61. END PIECE OF FEED CYLINDER 
IN POSITION. 



mesh and afterward with a coarse and still coarser mesh 
successively, all the time losing grain of a coarser size, the 
coarsest particles of the whole falling through the open 

space next to the 
flange, a, by the time 
the cylinder has made 
a complete revolu- 
tion. The operation 
of revolving a cylin- 
der and its succes- 
sive positions are 
plainly shown in 
Figs.92,93,94and95. 
The sticks, h, b, 
Fig. 60, are to keep 
the cylinder in shape, 
while it is being slip- 
ped onto the shaft. 
This shaft of half-inch iron pipe must have a hole drilled 
through it to receive a common wire nail, as shown in 
the left of Fig. 60 ; the nail being clamped against the 
wood by means of small staples. 

At one end of the shaft or axle, attach a crank, which 
must be moved only the very slightest distance at a time, 
so as to spill the desired quantity at a dose into each pen 
of birds located under each cylinder, and supplied with 
straw, chaff, or litter, upon which the feed drops. 
Eight or ten hours or so must elapse before you make 
the axle accomplish a complete revolution. In a frac- 
tion of a second yon can sift down a dose for a half 
dozen flocks or for a score of flocks, according to the 
length of the building and the axle. It takes no longer 
to feed several hundred birds than to feed twenty. A 
mere jar with the thick of the hand against the handle 
of the crank does the business. This jar should be given 
two or three times an hour. 



THE EXEECTSEE. 



157 



In a large establishment, where an attendant must 
be on hand pretty much all the time, anyhow, this oper- 
ation by a crank will be chosen, but the fancier or 
amateur, or ordinary keeper of one or a few flocks, will 
do well to attach clockwork to the dropper, and to the 
chaff box described further on, so that the feeding may 
be carried on regularly, while he is at his office or store 
or even out of town. The easiest way to make a crank 
and attach it to the axle of the dropper, is to use a half- 
inch iron pipe six inches long and another piece four 
inches long for a handle, and two elbows, one of which 
is to be screwed to one end of the axle, see Figs. 120 and 

63. Or, if a black- 
^*' :! ^r^x^ smith can be obtain- 

ed more readily than 
a plumber, one end 
of the hollow axle 
may be plugged with 
iron and a wrought 
iron crank, Figure 
67, may be attached 
with a nut and 
washer. Or a ready 
made crank with a 
wooden handle, Fig. 
69, can generally be 
procured at a hard- 
ware store. Or, if 
you are near an ag- 
ricultural implement 
factory or a railroad 
shop and can get a handwheel, such as is represented in 
Fig. 68, it will be better than any sort of crank. 




FIG. 62. CRANK FOR WOODEN SHAFT. 



CHAPTEE XIX. 

THE TILT BOX. 

A pile of straw, leaves, chaff, excelsior, hay, or almost 
any sort of litter must be located under the cylinder. 
If the litter would always remain loose and huffy so that 
the grain would rattle down in interstices, then no fur- 
ther machinery would be needed. But it will not 
remain loose. The scratching of the birds will soon 
reduce long straw to short bits, and their trampling 
will turn the pile into a compact mass, on top of which 
the grain will lie and be devoured at once, and therefore 
no exercise to speak of will be secured. An agitator or 
litter-stirring apparatus is therefore necessary, as well as 
a grain dropper, so that the litter and grain may be 
thoroughly mixed together. 

There are a half dozen different methods of construct- 
ing simple machinery for mixing, but the simplest 
movement consists in using chaff, short cut straw or 
other stuff for litter that is short and heavy enough to 
roll and tumble readily, and placing it in a box or bin 
that is made to rock like a cradle. Let the floor be in a 
level position at the start, then rock the box till the 
floor stands at an almost perpendicular position, causing 
the litter to tumble, then rock the box back again to a 
level. The grain is dropped just before the litter begins 
to slide or tumble. By a simple device, to be presently 
described, the fowls are called out of the tilt box before 
it is rocked, and are not admitted till it is level again. 

The operation of rocking or tilting will be understood 
by referring to Figs. 72 and 73. Suppose the box is at 

158 



THE TILT BOX. 



159 



rest, as shown at A, Fig. 73, the litter being represented 
by the dots being level. The first step is to tilt to the 
position, B, and then stop a second and drop feed from 
the cylinder, 10, before the litter tumbles, then pass to 
the full tilt, C, Fig. 72, which makes a windrow or ridge, 
then immediately go back to the level position, D, when 




FIG. S3. END OF ROW OF FEED 



the windrow will be found intact at y, with grain mixed 
through it ready for the fowls to enter and go to work. 
The shape of the windrow is not destroyed by the motion 
of the tilt box in returning to the original position. 
After the birds have worked about twenty minutes, 
scratching, the litter will be back to its original level, 



160 



AN EGG FARM. 




FIG. 64. FENCE RATCHET. 



or nearly level, position, as shown at A, Fig. 73. There 
is wire netting from x to w and from w to y, which 
gives light and air, and also permits the feed to drop 
through when the cylinder is jarred slightly while the 
box is at the half tilt. The portions of the box at u, v, 
w, x and y are boarded, and to put litter in the box or 

take it out, make v and the 
wire strip next it in the form 
of a door, to be hinged to 
the board, w. The tilt box 
is supported upon and rota- 
ted by an axle, 4, of iron 
pipe, which rests on joists, 
these being about two feet 
above the floor of the build- 
ing, so as to give the box 
room to tilt. A row of tilt boxes, each for a separate 
flock, may be attached to one continuous axle, and all 
tilted simultaneously, a row of feed cylinders being sus- 
pended above them to correspond. 

If, for the sake of economy or convenience, a wooden 
axle is preferred, the tilt boxes may be nailed to a sawed 
stick 3x3 or 4x4, or larger, according to the number of 
tilt boxes it is to turn, the stick being rounded where it 
rests on the joists ; or a straight pole from the forest 
may be substituted, Fig. 74, and clamped to the box by 
bolts, h,b, passing through pieces of hard wood, a and c. 
Clamps consisting of single blocks of wood and two 
bolts, Fig. 98, may be used to attach small (chick size) 
tilt boxes to iron axles. The feed cylinder and tilt box 
are useful for adult birds and for chicks reared artifi- 
cially in brooders, the size being according to the size 
of the birds. 

Various other mechanical movements designed for 
mixing grain and litter together have been tested, but 
none has been found as satisfactory as the tilt box. A 



THE TILT BOX. 



161 



box is shown in Fig. 114, with a portion of its floor, 27, 
curved. There are revolving arms, 32, and spokes, 33, 
attached to the axle, 34. The box does not tilt or 
revolve, the motion of the arms and spokes sufficing to 
stir the litter. This apparatus works fairly well, and 




FIG. 65. ROW OF FEED CYLINDERS. 



better than several other mixing machines tried at our 
establishment, but the tilt box excels all of them. 

The method of calling out the occupants of the tilt 
box into an adjoining apartment remains to be described. 
The reader is referred to Figs. 71 and 76, which, how- 
ever, are not literal representations, but are intended 
merely to show the principle. Figure 71 is in perspective, 
11 



162 



AN" EGG FARM. 



and Fig. 76 is a transverse section of the same. Com- 
pare Fig. 72 with Fig. 76. Both cuts represent a tilt 
box turning on the axle 4, although the position is 
reversed in one cut, and both show the location of the 
octagonal feed cylinder overhead. Figures 71 and 76 
show the essential features of the method of calling the 




FIG. 66. CHICKS RESPONDING TO FOOD SIGNAL. 



birds out of the way and keeping them away until the 
tilting operation is finished. The <size and preparation 
of the various parts will be modified according to the 
dimensions of your fowl house, in case of laying stock, 
or the size and shape of your brooders, in case of winter 
chicks. 

In Fig. 71 are given a tilting box and a stationary 



THE TILT BOX. 163 

box, both being set on legs and being a part of a series 
ranged along a passageway where the attendant goes. 
We will suppose we are describing apparatus of chick 
size. The tilt box, 1, underneath the cylinder, 10, is 
2 or 2 1-2 ft. wide, 3 1-2 or 4 ft. long, according to the 
number of birds you prefer in a brood, and 1 ft. high. 
For the sake of light and air the top is made mostly of 
wire netting, one inch mesh. Bottom and ends are of 
boards, sides partly boards, partly Avire. Each box 
should have three to five pecks of fine litter, the quan- 




FIG. 67. WROUGHT IRON CRANK. 

tity depending on the age of the chicks, number in a 
brood, and size of the box. The tilt boxes alternate 
with stationary boxes down the whole length of the pas- 
sage, although but one tilt box, 1, and one stationary 
box, 7, are shown in Fig. 71. 

You call the chicks out of the tilt box into the sta- 
tionary box by means of a bell, 22, pulled by the handle 
at 24, and by setting in motion a small extra cylinder, 
20, represented here as of a square form, which contains 
grain and is supported and moved by axle, 19, and 
crank, 21. The small cylinder is set directly over the 



164 



AN EGG FARM. 



stationary box, 7, which adjoins the tilt box. These 
two boxes communicate by small exit apertures, 8 and 9, 
cut in the ends of each box. These apertures recipro- 
cate when the tilt box is horizontal, but ingress and 

egress is cut off when 
the tilt box has tilted 
half its journey. In 
both Figs. 71 and 76, 
a board flap may be 
seen (the artist omit- 
ted giving it a num- 
eral), with its lower 
edge curved, the flap 
being attached to the 
tilt box under the 
aperture, 9. It fol- 
lows that when the 
tilt is partly accom- 
plished, as shown by 
the dotted lines, com- 
munication between the tilt box and the stationary 
box is cut off, so that the birds cannot return to the tilt 
box until the tilt is completed and the box is on its 
homeward passage and almost arrived at its original 
level position. A flap attached to a tilt 
box is shown more plainly in Fig. 141, 
which also represents the best shaped 
box that we have tried. The opening in 
the box through which the chicks pass 
in and out is made high enough above 
the floor to allow for a layer of litter. 
It will be noticed that the wirework 
at the top is in the form of a cloor, 
as previously explained, to facilitate removing litter 
and putting in fresh occasionally. 

Eef erring to Figs. 71 and 76, the order of movements 




CRANK WHEEL. 




THE TILT BOX. 



165 



is as follows : You ring the bell at 22, at the same time 
causing the flag, 25, to nutter, although the flag is not 
absolutely necessary, and then you jar the crank, 21, 
slightly, causing a few particles to fall, and the chicks 
rush pell-mell through the exit apertures, 8 and 9, into 
the stationary box, 7. You then immediately begin to 
rotate the tilt box, pausing when the tilt is half accom- 
plished, at which time the floor of the box stands at a 
slope of 45° and the litter has not begun to slump or 
slide at all. During this pause you tap the crank, 16, 
of the main cylinder, 10, causing a sprinkle of feed to 




FIG. TO. END OF SHAFT. 



drop upon the litter. Then you complete the tilt, and 
the feed will be found mixed all through the ridge or 
windrow of litter. 

Next bring the tilt box to a level position, which 
affords ingress to the birds, and, no bell call being now 
necessary, in they will rush in two seconds, and proceed 
to tackle the windrow and level it, to a surprising degree 
uniformly, all over the bottom of the box, if the litter is 
not too coarse, and they will be just about twenty minutes 
doing it every time, if the quantities of both litter and 
grain are right. Three times an hour, or thirty or more 
times a day, you can repeat the operation as you choose. 

The bell call, or a flag call, or some sort of a signal, is 
a necessity, at first, when the chicks are to be enticed 



166 



AN EGG FARM. 



into the stationary box, preparatory to tilting. Later, 
no bell is needed, for the very slightest movement of the 
feed dropping appliances, unless absolutely noiseless, 
will serve the purpose of the bell. Referring to the 
hand bell shown in Figs. 71 and 76, a trip gong bell, 




FIO. 71. DETAILS OF TILT BOX. 



Fig. 126, is preferable, and you may use one for every 
fifty or seventy-five feet of your brooder house. Or sus- 
pend an ordinary sleigh bell by a cord over every brooder 
box. People ask how long it takes to teach chicks to 
understand the bell, and are surprised that only a few 
days are needed for this. Fowls, old and young, rely 



THE TILT BOX. 



167 



much on their ears, and as nature has taught them, 
during thousands, or perhaps millions, of generations, 
to give heed to a language among themselves, they have 
a natural aptitude for learning the meaning of sound 
signals. After they have been taught, they will heed a 
bell hung at a great distance from their apartment, or, 





D 






4t> 






\ 



FIG. 72. TILT BOX— REVERSE OF FIG. 76. 



s'v/ 



as we have said, the slightest noise made by the friction 
or jarring of the feed-dropping apparatus, or its connect- 
ing parts, will render a bell unnecessary. 

In Fig. 71, the axle, 14, is represented as fitted with 
a ratchet, 17, and pawl, 18 ; but these are unnecessary, 
the friction of 14 against its wooden supports being suf- 
ficient to hold it in the position it is left by the operator, 
unless the axle supports quite a long row of cylinders. 



168 



AN EGG FARM. 



Or one or more brakes made of a stick of wood pivoted 
to an immovable stick at one end and having a weight 
attached to the other end, may be located so as to ride 
crosswise of the axle and impart the desired amount of 
friction. It is our aim to show homemade styles of 







FIG. 73. USING THE TILT BOX. 



construction for everything, as well as more elaborate 
patterns. Axles 4, 14 and 19 are represented in the cut 
as passing through a wall or partition in the foreground. 
Figure 76 represents the same as Fig. 71, it being a verti- 
cal section substantially through 2, 2. The numerals 
are the same in both cuts. The clotted lines in Fig. 76 



THE TILT BOX. 



169 



represent the half tilt, which is the position at the time 
the dropping cylinder is moved to discharge feed upon 
the litter. The operation of tilting is further illustrated 
in Figs. 72 and 77. 

Having shown the mode of operation, by means of 
Figs. 71 and 76, we beg to again remind the reader that 




W ~ ~i 



FIG. 74. TILT BOX OX POLE. 



these two cuts are not literal representations of the 
exerciser, for in order to make plain "how the thing 
works," we have employed these in a general way to 
exhibit the principle merely. The shape and proportion 
of the two boxes or apartments, and of the other parts, 
must be modified to fit various cases. The essential 



170 



AN" EGG FARM. 






ideas are the dropping of grain and ringing a bell to call 

the birds out of the tilt box, a flap or revolving door to 

shut them out, the dropping of grain 

onto litter, the stirring or mixing of 

the litter and grain together, and, 

finally, allowing the birds admission 

to the tilt box ; all these stages being 

accomplished by an operator at one 

extreme end of the building. 

To turn the shaft which supports 
the tilt boxes, a winch, Fig. 138, may 
be employed, such as is used for 
hoisting, provided the line of tilt 
boxes is a long one. Or, a long iron 
crank maybe employed, as in Figs. 
78, 79 and 80. It may be two and 
a half to three feet long, and one or 
one and a quarter inches in diameter. 
It will suffice for twenty or thirty 
chick tilt boxes, or five or six layer 
tilt boxes, and may be made by any 
blacksmith and attached by set 
screws. The figures last named show 
tilt boxes of the shape of Fig. 143, 
which is a very good style, these 
being built of wire wherever possible, 
for the sake of light and air, and the 
box being deepest at the rear to re- 
ceive the windrow. The axle is not 
at the center, but nearest the rear, 
so as to allow revolving more easily 
on the return trip. In Figs. 78, 79 
and 80, the call -cylinder axle and 

the axle of the regular feed dropping L '• 

cylinders have the sort of hand wheel attached that is 
shown in Fig. 68, a brake wheel procurable at car shops. 




THE TILT BOX. 171 

The levers or cranks attached to the tilt box axles are 
long, and the handwheels attached to the cylinder axles 
are of considerable size, because the axles represented in 
the cuts are each 145 ft. long. If the tilt box axle is of 
wood, a wooden lever, Fig. 88, strengthened by iron 
plates, may be fitted to one end of the axle, which is 
squared, Fig. 70, b, and after the lever is put on, a 
collar, a, keeps it in place. 



CHAPTER XX. 

OUTDOOR EXERCISER. 

As exercise out of doors is very desirable during the 
whole year, except when the weather forbids, and as the 
tilt box is not very well adapted to out of doors, a style 
of apparatus different from that we have described is of 
great value for use in yards. While the form of exercise 
for indoors consists in scratching, the outdoor exercise 
is by running, jumping and flying. To begin with, two 
small yards of 50 to 100 square ft. of ground are con- 
structed for each flock, 100, 150 or 200 ft. apart, accord- 
ing to the space at command; these being connected by 
low, narrow runways of wire netting stretched over 
frames of wood or iron, exactly as described for breeders 
and sitters on the extensive plan. 

These runways are only 2 1-2 or 3 ft. high and the 
same in width and are preferably built in separate mov- 
able sections, say 12 ft. long. They are the same as 
those used for fowls kept yarded in connection with the 
extensive or itinerant plan. These sections or hurdles 
can be readily moved and the ground plowed to keep it 
sweet and clean, and being closed at top and sides by the 
wirework and open at both ends, they make a continuous 
passage or runway when placed in a line end to end. 
We have said that each runway terminates at either end 
in a small yard. Now, there is also an additional yard 
attached to each runway, midway between the two end 
yards. This center yard should be covered, 4 or 5 
ft. wide, and considerably higher than the runways, say 
4 ft. for Asiatics, 5 or 6 ft. for medium breeds and 7 or 

172 



OUTDOOR EXERCISER. 



173 



8 ft., at least, for high fliers like the Leghorns. The 
length should be in proportion to the night, say 8 to 16 ft. 




FIG. 76. TRANSVERSE SECTION OF TILT BOX. 

These little yards with runway attached will afford 
fifty times the exercise in proportion to the building- 
material employed and the space occupied, that the ordi- 



174 



AN EGG FARM. 



nary yard will. The birds will take more exercise even 
than the farmer's flock, which runs at large. For the flock 
in a yard or on a free range will walk, while those in the 
runway will run, that's the difference. The surface of 



T 




T 




. i'. .. ' 




m 



I.NTEPJOK ALTEEKATE SYSTKM. SEE VUiS. 128 ASU 130. 



an ordinary yard becomes, in a short time, as bare as 
the desert of Sahara. It affords not the slightest incen- 
tive to exertion. There is no more vegetation growing 
on it than on the lid of a copper teakettle, and it is 



OUTDOOR EXERCISER. 



175 



seldom, indeed, that a stray grasshopper invades its 
sterile precincts. The nature of the fowls is to run, 
search, spy and hunt, yet they become discouraged and 
finally relapse into idleness and mope in a corner. But 




FIG. 78. ROW OF TILT BOXES, FROM END. 

the runways we are describing cure all that, as the reader 
will see further on. 

Figure 82 gives a partial view of a series of low, narrow 
runways, connecting with a row of end pens or small 



176 



AiST EGG FARM. 



yards. Figure 83 is a ground plan that will further 
assist the reader to understand the arrangement of the 
runways and pens. Let 1, 1, 1, 1 represent one row of 




TILT BOXES PARTLY TURNED 



end pens, which we will call the "nearby" pens, mean- 
ing those which are at the end the most convenient for 
access of the poultry keeper. These are for four flocks 
respectively, 2, 2, 2, 2 being the distant end yards for the 



OUTDOOR EXERCISER. 177 

same flocks, and 3, 3, 3, 3 the midway yards, built high as 
was described, being intended for jumping and flying. 
The runways enable the birds to run from 1 to 2, pass- 
ing through 3 on the way. Across the center of yard, 
3, there is a board fence set at right angles with the run- 
way. This fence is composed of a vertical frame, which 
supports horizontal movable boards, each six inches 
wide, more or less, as may be convenient. At first, 
leave all the boards out till the birds, are used to the run- 
ways. Then slide in the bottom board, after a few clays 
add another board, and build up in this way by easy 
stages. The dotted lines at 3 show the location of the 
fences. 

Now, for the incentive to running back and forth the 
whole length of the runways and giving a good jump 
and fly at the halfway house. This incentive consists 
in locating a series of feed droppers over 1, 1, 1, 1, and 
another over 2, 2, 2, 2, at the respective centers as indi- 
cated by the dotted lines. These droppers or cylinders 
may be like those previously described, which are sus- 
pended over the tilt boxes of the indoor exerciser. 
Further on, we shall describe other feed droppers in the 
form of pouches or sieves instead of cylinders. 

There is a bell at the nearby line of cylinders and 
another at the distant row. The operator stands at A 
to move the cylinders of the nearby pens and rings the 
bell, while, without leaving the spot, he can also ring 
the distant bell when desired by means of a bell wire, 
stretched from A to B, and he can also move the 
cylinders over 2, 2, 2, 2, without leaving his post at A, by 
means of a simple contrivance illustrated in Fig. 82. In 
this cut, the feeder is supposed to be looking directly 
down upon the cylinders and pens, it being a ground 
plan of three runways. The artist has broken off these 
runways, however, and the operating wires also, and 
omitted the halfway pens, the entire length being too 
12 



178 



AN EGG FARM. 



great to be shown in the diagram. The two cranks in 
the cut are supposed to be at the nearby pens, corre- 




TILT BOXES TURNED. 



sponding to the point A in Fig. 83, so as to be within 
easy reach of the operator. 

A row of cylinders over distant pens are seen in the 
background of Fig. 96. As previously stated, the cyl- 
inder axle of the nearby pens may be revolved by means 



OUTDOOR EXERCISER. 179 

of the nearby crank. The cylinder axle belonging to the 
distant pens has, instead of a crank, a wooden spool, 
eight inches in diameter, attached to one end of the 
axle and a small flexible wire, No. 14, passes two or 
three times around this- spool. To the short end of the 
wire is attached a weight, not shown in Fig. 82, while 
the long end extends the whole length of the runway, 
terminating at a point near the nearby pens, where it 
winds upon a small spool or axle, to which a crank and 
a ratchet and pawl are attached. 

In Fig. 84,- the two spools and their connecting- 
wire are shown viewed from the end instead of from 
above as in Fig. 82— 14a is the distant spool, 145 the 
wire and 14c the nearby spool in both figures. In 
Fig. 84, W is a weight which is hung in the pit, P, 
dug in the ground ; G, 67, four feet deep and walled or 
boarded at the sides, and furnished with a movable top 
or lid with a hole in it, through which the wire passes. 
The distance between the two spools may be fifty feet or 
so for young chicks, or several hundred feet for grown 
fowls, therefore the wire is represented as broken off 
the same as in Fig. 82. And we may say that in all the 
cuts the intention is merely to show the principles of 
construction, whether the illustrations are made to scale 
or not. 

In Fig. 82, the spools are represented as somewhat 
elaborate, with rims, but these are not essential, and in 
Fig. 84 the spools are simple round sticks without rims, 
such as may be sawed from natural poles. The spool, 
which has a crank attached, instead of being of wood, 
may consist of an iron fence ratchet and pawl, Fig. 64, 
such as is used to tighten wires on fences. We have 
used it with great satisfaction, it being strong, durable 
and not liable to get out of order. These ratchets are 
in the market wherever barbed wire is sold, price five or 
six cents each. To operate the fence ratchet, get a 



180 



AtST EGG FARM. 



plumber to make a crank of a piece of half-inch iron 
pipe, six inches long, and for the handle another piece, 
four inches long, and two elbows, one of which he can 
attach to the shank of the ratchet by cutting four slits 
one-half inch long in one end of the elbow and hammer- 
ing it to slip over the shank. Drill through both shank 




FIG. 81. FOWLS AT EXERCISE. 



and elbow and pin together with a common wire nail, 
Fig. 120. 

In Fig. 63, this crank of half-inch iron pipe is shown 
attached to the ratchet. The latter, however, is obscure 
in the cut, being shown on a small scale. The whole is 
fastened to a post, about breast high, in a position for 



OUTDOOR EXERCISER. 



181 



use. The lower wire runs to the spool of the distant 
row of cylinders, the same as are numbered 14a in Figs. 
82 and 84. In Figs. 66 and 96, the reader will per- 
ceive the same distant row of cylinders in the back 
ground. Figure 83 is an end view of the same. In 







FIG. 82. PLAN OF PENS WITH CYLINDERS. 



Fig. 63, the upper wire is for the bell and corresponds 
to 22 in Fig. 82. 

If you want to make the nearby spool of wood, you 
can get your blacksmith to attach an iron handle and 
crank fitted with a set screw, Fig. 85, or, if you prefer 



182 



AN EGG FA EM. 



B 



Ai-T- "vi 



J-, 



FIG. 83. GROUND PLAN OF HUN WAYS. 



OUTDOOR EXERCISER. 183 

a homemade wooden crank, it may be fastened directly 
to your homemade wooden spool, Fig. 62. The nearby 
axle, 16, in Fig. 82, must be provided with a crank, 
which you can have made of pipe, the same as for the 
fence ratchet in Fig. 120, only you omit to split the 
elbow. Keep it intact, and it will just screw onto your 
axle of half-inch pipe. 

The partitions of the nearby pens and also of the dis- 
tant pens must be carried up nine inches higher than 
the tops of the pens, so as to serve as supports of the 
cylinder axles, and give the cylinders with their tin 
flanges room to turn. See Fig. 65. 

The modus operandi can be easily discovered from the 
above description. The birds race like Jehu through 
the runway, whenever the bell is rung and grain dropped 
from the cylinder at either end. Moreover, when the 
keeper is not at hand and the cylinders have not been 
moved for some time, they make numerous trips back 
and forth on their own hook, because they have only one 
idea in their heads, which may be expressed thus : 
"Let's run and see what there is good at the other end." 
It will be found that it is very easy to teach fowls, old 
or young and of various species, to run at the sound of 
the bell. They are naturally great listeners and give 
close attention to every sort of sound within their hear- 
ing, which is very acute. A cock will respond to a 
crowing that is a mile or more away, if the wind is not 
unfavorable. Their own language they understand with- 
out learning. But they have an aptitude for learning 
aural signals other than the natural language of their 
species. 

Witness the common hen with a brood of turkey 
chicks, peafowl chicks or ducklings. At first, her 
younglings do not know what she means when she calls 
them to partake of a choice morsel. It is not their 
mother tongue. But in a few days they learn its mean- 



184 



AN EGG FARM. 



^1 






<s 



ing and respond with alac- 
rity. The best bell for our 
chicken call is the trip gong 
bell, Fig. 126. It is well- 
made, works easily, respond- 
ing quickly to the pull of the 
bell wire and is not expen- 
sive. After a while, the 
movement of the feed drop- 
per will attract their atten- 
tion and you do not have 
to ring the bell. The birds, 
young or old,, scamper 
through the runway and 
jump and fly over the cen- 
tral fence with a prompt- 
ness and unanimity that is 
like that of well-drilled sol- 
diers on the double quick, 
Fig." 8J, and their move- 
ments never fail to elicit ex- 
clamations of delight from 
bystanders. The perform- 
ance is not intended as a 
whimsey or novelty for fun's 
sake, but for downright busi- 
ness, dollars and cents. Yet 
it is a show all the same, as 
attractive as 
the perform- 
ance of well- 
trained dogs 
or horses. 
Figure 145 
represents a 
group of spectators at a poultry show, witnessing, for 




OUTDOOR EXERCISER. 185 

the first time, half -grown chicks in a runway at full 
speed, intent on the feed just dropped from the cylin- 
ders in the background. These chicks were, of course, 
taught on their native heath, before being trotted out 
for exhibition. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

SUCCESS WITH DUCKS. 

The outdoor exerciser, in a modified form, is especially 
useful in commercial duck raising, an industry which 
has already assumed enormous proportions and which 
has come to stay ; for the Chinese, who, for thousands 
of years, have made ducks a favorite source of food sup- 
ply, knew what they were about, although Europeans 
had, mean while, hastily concluded that they would not 
pay as well as common fowls. 

There is no other valuable animal food produced that 
is so cheaply raised as partly grown Pekin ducks by 
wholesale, by modern methods, which insure quick 
growth. On a small scale, without the benefits of care, 
skill and system, they are not profitable, since, when 
kept beyond a certain age, ducks of any breed will eat 
their heads off. The ducklings need no apparatus for 
exercise, being unlike chicks in this respect, for they 
will shuffle around, even if kept in a very small space, 
whether there is any incentive to move or not. They are 
naturally exceedingly active when very young. Neither 
do the laying ducks require special provision for exer- 
cise during the laying season, provided they have unlim- 
ited range and comparatively scanty feed during the 
remainder of the year, so that they may be induced to 
move about actively to forage on insects and vegetation. 

In this off season, they must not be kept under the 
pressure of high feeding, which is advantageous to their 
owner when the laying season approaches and early eggs 
for hatching are desired. Now a good range, after the 

186 



SUCCESS WITH DUCKS. 



187 



laying season is over, with suitable forage, fresh water, 
security from marauders, and all other requisites, is com- 
monly very difficult to obtain when the breeding birds 
number not hundreds but thousands ; hence, the great 
advantages of the outdoor exerciser for the ducks 
reserved for breeding. 

All that is requisite is a distant row of feed cylinders, 
as in Fig. 65, and in place of covered runways a row of 




FIG. 85. CRANK, WITH SET SCREW. 



long yards wide enough to admit a team for plowing, so 
as to keep the soil free of taint, and at the nearby end of 
the yards swimming tanks under the feed cylinders, as 
in Fig. 86. In this figure, a ditch is cut and boarded at 
sides and bottom ; c showing the original surface of the 
ground, e an inclined plane of boards with lath tacked 
on to afford foothold, and d, a platform with a slight 
slant for drainage. The feed cylinder is at A and the 



188 



AX EGG FARM. 



long yard begins, at Y. If the "lay of the ground" 
admits of a shallow ditch, the approach, e, may he 
omitted. 

The tank may be two, three or four feet wide, or more, 
according to the quantity of running water that can be 
supplied. As the idea is to have the tank several hun- 
dred feet long and divided by wirework into sections for 
the accommodation of numerous flocks, a brisk current 
is demanded for cleanliness's sake, therefore the tank 



Y 




FIG. 86. EXERCISER FOR WATER FOWL. 



should not be too wide. The depth of the water is very 
important. The ditch and the tank which lines it 
should be constructed so that the depth may be just suf- 
ficient to cause the ducks to assume the position shown 
in the cut, and grope and grovel for the feed which has 
been dropped from the cylinders above upon the bottom 
of the tank, thus giving play to all the principal sets of 
muscles. As they hurry through the yards, they will at 
times use their wings as well as their legs, and, while 



SUCCESS WITH DUCKS. 189 

reaching for their food at the bottom of the tank, their 
necks and bills will be actively employed. Nature will 
receive her just clues. 

This is not like " hogging" feed out of a trough. Of 
course, there must be a bell near the distant feed cylin- 
ders and another at the tank. The cylinders need not 
be charged offcener than once a day, and by carrying a 
pail of soaked wheat, barley or cracked corn in one hand 
and a tin scoop in the other, the filling can be very 
quickly done. The establishment is supposed to have an 
attendant, employed at something near at hand, so that 
he may move the cylinders and ring the bells every hour 
or oftener, but the perfection of labor saving is to have 
this done by clockwork, similar to that which strikes 
the hours in a tower clock. Pekins, which are the 
duck for commercial raising, are indifferent to swim- 
ming, preferring dry land in fact ; yet they can be 
induced to work in this way to their great benefit during 
the off season. In this way, the stamina of the strain of 
selected breeding birds can be maintained generation 
after generation and diseases kept at bay. 



CHAPTEE XXII. 

PERFECTING THE DETAILS. 

The axle for a row of feed cylinders may be made 
from iron pipe, half inch diameter, if the row is not 
over 150 ft. in length, and as the pressure of the weight 
of the grain in the cylinders tends to hold the lengths 
of pipe together, there is no danger of unscrewing. 
But, as in case of the tilt boxes, there is sometimes pres- 
sure, tending to unscrew the lengths of pipe, a collar, 
consisting of a short piece of larger pipe, should be 
slipped over the end of each length of pipe at the joint, 
this collar to be bolted to the pipe. Let a, a, in Fig. 
87, represent each the end of a length of pipe, meeting 
at the joint, e. The collar, c, encloses the end of each 
pipe, being held in place by the bolts, i, i, which pass 
through holes drilled through both the collar and the 
pipes. For brooder chicks' tilt boxes, three-fourths inch 
pipe will answer for the axle, and no collars will be nec- 
essary unless the row of tilt boxes exceeds 1 50 ft. in 
length. 

For axles to tilt boxes of grown fowls, the pipe should 
be two inches in diameter, and the collars may be omit- 
ted if the line of tilt boxes is less than 50 ft. in length. 
When operations are begun on a small scale, it will fre- 
quently happen that it is more convenient to use wooden 
axles for the tilt boxes, like Fig. 74, revolved by means 
of a long wooden lever, Fig. 88. To prevent a very 
disagreeable creaking, which frightens the birds, as well 
as annoys their owner, when such wooden axles are 
made to turn, fasten strips of tin under the axles at the 

190 



PERFECTING THE DETAILS. 



191 



points where they bear on their supports, for wood 
against wood will creak in spite 
of oiling, while wood against 
metal will move silently, whether 
lubricated or not. A wooden 
axle should not be over 50 or 
60 ft, long, for if too long it 
will "give" or twist too much. 
To aid readers who prefer 
something simpler than the feed 
cylinder previously described for 
dropping grain, illustrations of 
a feed pouch are given. Figure 
89 shows wire cloth of different » 
sizes of mesh, Fig. 58, nailed to '■ 
end pieces of wood forming a ~ 
sort of pouch, the whole being \ 
nailed to a square stick which * 
serves as an axle, this axle being, > 
of course, rounded at the bear- : 
ing places, which are not shown s 
in the cut. The narrow board \ 
in the foreground is at the side ' 
where the grain is put into the 
pouch, the attendant going the 
rounds with a pail of grain in 
one hand and a scoop in the 
other, this board answering the 
same purpose as the flange of 
tin, a, in the cylinder, Fig. 60, 
and the board, like the flange, 
is set flaring, to facilitate charg- 
ing with grain. Such a pouch 
can be used indoors over a tilt 
box, or out of doors over a pen 
in the out-of-doors exerciser, and the shaft may be 3x3 



"T 



m 



fc 



A1ST EGG FARM. 



in. or 4x4 in. 



, or any size demanded by its length and 
by the number of pouches fastened to it. 
The pouch may be two or three feet long, 
and the width of the end pieces must, of 
course, suit the size of the shaft. 

A still simpler style, and easier to con- 
struct, shown in Fig. 110, goes well with 
the rough pole. The projecting bottom 
piece gives a sufficient surface to nail 
through. A flange board similar to that 
in Fig. 89 may be easily added, if desired. 
If the distant out-of-doors feed pens, such 
as are shown at B, in Fig. 83, are fitted 
with such a pole and pouches, no spool 
need be used, bat a wire and weight can 
be employed, the same exactly as in Fig. 
84, the big end of the pole serving for a 
spool. 

If rounded bearings are to be made for 
a square shaft of a row of tilt boxes, or 
for a square shaft of a row of feed pouches 
or feed cylinders, then it will not be found 
a good plan to cut away the square cor- 
ners of your wooden shaft, because it 
weakens it. Build onto it, instead, by 
simply nailing on rounded bearing pieces 
like that shown in Fig. 90. Figure 91 
gives a transverse section of a shaft -or 
axle, c, with four such pieces attached, a, 
on which the axle turns. The rounded 
bearing pieces may turn in a notch either 
square or rounded, cut in a horizontal 
stick and overlaid with tin, as previously 
mentioned. 

A square wooden shaft for out-of-door 
feed boxes may be attached to the spool on 



PERFECTING THE DETAILS. 



193 



which the wire winds, by simply nailing on six half- 
moon pieces of inch board, d, Figs. 92, 93, 94 and 95, 
the square end of the shaft being simply toed with nails 
to the end of the roller before the half-moon pieces are 
nailed on. Figure 121 shows 
one of these half-moon pieces 
by itself. Figures 92 to 95 in- 
clusive represent the same shaft 
and its belongings in different 
positions. In addition to a 
spool, these four cuts show both 
a pouch and a cylinder, and 
the reader can judge which is 
easiest to make. By studying 
these cuts, the different posi- 
tions of both pouch and cylin- 
der may be also noted, and it 
will be understood how the 
grain drops, little by little, 
through the meshes of various 
sizes, the cracked corn consist- 
ing of particles which are also 
of various sizes, whole wdieat 
and broken wheat, or wheat 
screenings, oats, buckwheat or 
millet may also be employed to 
furnish different sizes. In these 
four cuts, a shows a bearing for 
shaft to rest on and turn on ; 
h is a feed pouch ; c, shaft ; d, 
one of the six half-moon pieces, 
attached in pairs, and e is a 
feed cylinder. Figure 97 illustrates a still simpler home- 
made wooden shaft and cylinder, the roller or spool, and 
attachments, being made entirely of inch boards. Each 
end of the feed cylinder consists of two pieces of boards. 




FIG. 89. FEED POTXCH. 



194 



AX EGG FARM. 



with, a notch in each to receive the shaft. Three tools 
only are needed for making this style, a knife, a saw and 
a hammer. To cheapen construction, this homemade 
cylinder we are describing does not extend out into a 
flange as at a, Fig. 60. The flange is convenient for 
putting in grain, but not indispensable. 

It being our aim to show how wood may be substi- 
tuted for metal in the construction of nearly all the 
apparatus employed to induce poultry to take exercise, 
and how ordinary ingenuity may build a homemade 
equipment without the services of a trained mechanic, 




FIG. 90. ROUNDED BEARING FOR SQUARE SHAFT. 



we illustrate by Fig. 99 a spool for the outdoor exerciser, 
with a strong wooden crank and handle, and posts and 
frame to support these. Figure 100 is a transverse sec- 
tion of the same, the letters in both cuts referring to 
the same parts. Figure 100 is drawn to a scale one- 
fourth inch to a foot. The same thing, only larger and 
stronger, may be attached to the axle of tilt boxes. All 
the parts are pieces of plank or scantling, excepting the 
stick marked m (cut off from a pole), the pin, a, which 
serves as a handle, and the smaller pins which keep the 
spool in position. Inch boards and 2x4 and 2x6 dimen- 
sion stuff are the principal materials. The pins, /, i 



PERFECTING THE DETAILS. 



195 



and as also the handle, a, should he of hard wood. 
The pieces, Tc and e, have each a half-moon notch for 
the spool, m, to turn in. The crank, T), is reinforced 
by the pieces, c, d and e, to strengthen it where it 
encloses the square shank of the spool, m; also the 
pieces, g and li, serve Co give a firm setting to the 
handle, a. 




FIG. 91. TRANSVERSE SECTION OF AXLE SHAFT. 

In the vertical section given in Fig. 100, the imaginary 
line of cleavage passes through the exact center of the 
windlass or spool stick, m, lengthwise, and also through 
the handle, a, lengthwise. 

Instead of a pouch or cylinder, what may he called a 
sieve may be used for dropping feed. Figure 101 illus- 
trates one of these turned bottom up, to show that the 
bottom is made with a double slant, and consists of wire 
mesh of different sizes, like that in a cylinder or pouch, 
and a strip of tin in the center, this last serving as a 
floor to hold the grain when the sieve is charged. A 
long row of these sieves may be fastened to an iron pipe 
by bolts passing through holes drilled in the latter. 



100 



A 1ST EGG FARM. 




PERFECTING THE DETAILS. 197 

Figure 104 shows the lid, Fig. 105 gives an end view of 
the sieve, and Fig. 106 a series of sieves in position, 
each over a separate pen, two stout wires being stretched 
under the sieves to hold them level. The hoppers of 
tin in the lid, Figs. 104 and 100, are to facilitate charg- 
ing with grain, the lid being necessary to keep off spar- 
rows and pigeons. Figure 108 gives a top view of a 
sieve when the lid is off. To drop the grain, strike 
with a hammer on the end of a pipe that is shown in 
the foreground in Fig. 106. This end should be plugged 
with iron to prevent battering. This pipe may be quite 
a long one if desired, and the feed will drop in nearly 
the same quantity at every sieve affixed throughout its 
entire length, the jar being practically of the same force 
at one end of the pipe as at the other, unless the pipe is 
of extreme length. A coiled spring or. a bar spring, not 
shown in the cut, should be attached, to bring it back 
to the first position after each blow of the hammer. 

This sieve will do very well in lieu of cylinders for 
both indoor and outdoor exercisers for grown fowls, 
but cylinders deliver grain in more accurate doses than 
sieves, and the former are therefore preferable for 
brooder chicks — for things must be done exactly thus 
and so with small chickens. For indoors, where cords 
or wires can be conveniently attached overhead, this 
whole line of sieves may be suspended, swing fashion, 
instead of resting on a framework. In this case no 
spring is needed, the whole series of sieves returning by 
force of gravity to the original position after being 
jarred by the blow of the hammer. This method of 
suspension and swinging is the same as described earlier 
in this book in connection with the use of feed shelves. 

A hammer to be held in the hand for striking a row 
of sieves or a shelf nearby, should weigh one to three 
pounds, according as the shelf or the pipe connecting 
the sieves is 100 to 300 ft. lono-. For a row of distant 



198 



AX EGG FARM. 



PERFECTING THE DETAILS. 199 

sieves have a pivoted hammer, Fig. 18, Page 56, and a 
cord which reaches from the hammer to C, passing over 
two sash pulleys, Fig. 19, Page 58, on the way. This 
cord can extend 100 or 500 ft., or more, for that matter, 
to where the operator is. It may extend inside your 
dwelling, say to the kitchen, where the cook can give it 
a pull from time to time, or it may run to an office, 
workshop or store, or he attached to strong clockwork 
that is wound up to run all day, and, just as clocks are 
made to strike the hours or half hours, so the pulls on 
the hammer-wire connected with your feed dropper may 
he timed with equal precision. 

The tilt boxes for both brooder chicks and grown 
fowls will need larger and stronger clockwork, such as 
is attached to large orchestrions or music-producing 
machines, or apparatus used in gas works, in hotels, fac- 
tories or private dwellings, where the motive power is 
very heavy weights. Better yet, the machinery govern- 
ing the periodical pulls will be propelled by a steam 
engine, electricity or water power, as progress demands ; 
for the idea of feeding and tending fowls, and larger 
species of domestic animals as well, by machinery, is 
destined to be expanded indefinitely. 

To return to Fig. 18, of course the sticks to which 
the sash pulleys are attached, and also the uprights, 
must be immovable. JS T ow, will the reader please turn 
to Page 170, and imagine that the whole of the appara- 
tus of Fig. 75 is placed under the sash pulleys, close to 
the uprights in Fig. 18, Page 5(J, in such a position that 
when the hammer is dropped it will strike, kerchug, 
on the iron plate, h. To the board, a, attach the iron 
pipe which supports such a row of sieves as is shown in 
Fig. 106. The timber, n, is immovable, but h, m and a, 
with the 100 or 200 ft. or more of pipe attached, are all 
movable, and the coiled spring is compressible. Now, 
when the hammer strikes, everything in Fig. 75 moves 



200 



AN EGG FARM. 




PERFECTING THE DETAILS. 201 

excepting n, and every one of the long- line of sieves 
supposed to be attached is slightly jarred, and then the 
spring makes a move, forcing the whole line of sieves 
back again. You can drop grain one hundred times for 
each charging, and only a spoonful each time. 

Pipe, sieves, operating wire, pulleys, cord, spring, 
concussion plate, h, hammer, etc., combine to effect the 
same purpose as is indicated by the wire, weight, spools 
and long pipe with cylinders in Figs. 82 and 84. The 
feed shelf serves the same purpose as the sieves and the 
cylinders heretofore described, except, that it is not as 
accurate in distributing feed. The shelf has this advan- 
tage, — it is not necessary to use grain of different sizes, 
as is indispensable when the cylinder is employed. 

When you strike at one end of a wooden shelf or beam 
several hundred feet long, the jar is felt in some degree 
throughout its entire length, but is weakest by consid- 
erable at the point most distant from the hammer. In 
order, therefore, to transmit the shock better, fasten an 
iron pipe, rod or bar to the boards. In Fig. Ill, e rep- 
resents such a bar fastened to the board, a. The con- 
cussion plate, h, receives the blow. The board, a, in 
Fig. 17, Page 55, is supposed to be a continuation of 
the board, a, in Fig. 111. After a blow and a swing 
forward, the whole long shelf swings back towards the 
hammer, and meeting the stopper, i, it remains at rest 
awaiting another whack. The simplicity of the employ- 
ment of the force of gravity to effect the return to 
place, instead of the use of d spring, commends this 
style of feed dropper, and besides, tin and Avire mesh 
are needed for feed cylinders and sieves, but not for 
feed shelves One stroke with the hammer is enough 
for that time 

To keep the shelf in place, fasten two casters to the 
board, /, these boards, with the end pieces, being 
attached to some part of the building or to the frame 



202 



AN EGG FARM. 




PERFECTING THE DETAILS. 203* 

supporting the tilt box, so as to be stationary. As will 
be obvious, e, a, c, li and d are movable, but f, g and i 
are immovable. Two ordinary furniture caster wheels, 
Fig. 112, travel on the upper side of a, and another pair 
roll against the under surface of a, the shelf swinging 
and rolling back by its own weight after a stroke. If 
the shelf is one hundred and fifty feet long, or more, it 
should be widest nearest the hammer, and as you go 
towards the farthest end and the jar is less, each, suc- 
cessive section- board should be narrower. Begin with a 
board ten or twelve inches wide, and diminish to a width 
of five or six inches. In case of a shelf over a line of 
exercisers one hundred and fifty feet long or upwards, 
the boards must not only be narrow as you approach the 
end of the shelf furthest from the hammer, but they 
must be hung so as to be slanting. "When they are fas- 
tened together put wedge-shaped cleats between, so that 
each board shall be slightly steeper than the preceding 
one. Figures 113 and 115 show these cleats and the 
varying slants of the boards, e being a slender iron bar 
firmly attached to the boards, the same as e in Fig. 111. 
This bar is not absolutely indispensable unless the shelf 
is. extremely long. It is not to strengthen the shelf, 
but, as previously remarked, to transmit the jar of the 
hammer better than avooc! alone will do. In Figs. 105, 
113 and 115, the boards, are foreshortened in the cuts 
so as to occupy moderate space and show the idea of the 
cleats and the slanting position, but the reader must 
imagine them to be, in practice, ten, twelve or fifteen 
feet long each. 

If a feed shelf is indoors it is supposed to need no 
cover to protect the grain from pigeons, sparrows, stray 
fowls and rain. For outdoor use, however, fasten shal- 
low boxes upon your shelf, with lids opening upwards, 
and a slot cut through both the shelf and the bottom of 
the box at one side, as in Fig. 1 09, only the cut gives a 



204 



A]ST EGG FARM. 






spiral spring, Fig. 



box not long enough and deeper 
than is necessary. If not convenient 
to hang this shelf up out of doors, 
you can put a caster or two under it 
every fifteen or twenty feet, and to 
send it back to first position after a 
shock, a spring, i, can be arranged 
•to engage with the bar, e, or a spiral 
spring can be rigged at either end of 
the feed shelf on the plan shown in 
Fig. 75. See also Figs. 117 and 118. 
Figure 119 shows how the ham- 
mer can be made to move M while 
N remains stationary. The stick, 
N, and the other scantling near C, 
as also the one above JSf, should be 
fastened to stout posts if outdoors, 
or if indoors to the frame of the 
building, so as to be firm. Two such 
pulleys, only one of which, however, 
could be shown in the cut, serve to 
steer the cord, C, in operating the 
hammer, and also to turn the cord 
or its wire continuation to a course 
at right angles to the hammer han- 
dle, so that it may be extended to 
where the operator stands, hundreds 
of feet away. Either a long feed 
shelf or a row of feed sieves may be 
attached to M, and these may be 
supported entirely by casters, or by 
swing cords, wires or jack chains. 
Notice a cord, R, in Fig. 119, this 
being one of a row of cords. The 
107, is not visible in Fig. 119, but may 



PERFECTING THE DETAILS. 205 

be seen in Fig. 110. When the suspension plan is 
adopted, side casters only just enough to steer the shelf 
are used ; for nearly all the weight should be suspended 
by the cords or wires. Figure 122 shows a homemade 
style, a hard baked brick or a brick-shaped stone being 
used to add its weight to that of the hammer, which 
consists of a block of hard wood. This brick, B, is kept 
in place by pieces of inch board. A is the shelf, at the 
end of which is attached the concussion block, M. As 
will be readily understood, M and A move at a blow, 
compressing the spiral spring against the stick, N, 
which, with its attachments, is immovable. 




Tia. OS. BLOCK AXD BOLTS T< 
FASTEN TILT BOX TO AXLES. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 



FOR SOFT FEED. 



Now we have described thus far feed cylinders, feed 
sieves and feed shelves, whether with or without feed 
boxes attached, and these styles will all answer for dry 
feed, but not for meal dough, cooked vegetables, soaked 
grain, brewers' grains, fresh meat or any other form of 
moist feed. Ordinarily, it is true, dry feed is to be pre- 
ferred for both young and old birds. They will soak 
their grain just right by drinking just the proper quan- 
tity of water. 

Dry grain not only affords exercise, but is better any- 
how as the main reliance, apart from the matter of exer- 
cise, except for fattening fowls just at the finish. For 
special purposes, however, as for feeding ducks, for 
instance, or other waterfowl, which demand a large pro- 
portion of soft feed, a feed trough controlled at a dis- 
tance, like the cylinder sieve or shelf, is needed. 

Figures 123 and 124 give side views of such a feed 
trough, and Fig. 125 shows a transverse section of the 
same, the letters in the several cuts referring to the same 
details. Regarding ducks, see Chapter XXI and Fig. 86. 
A good way is to have a water tank, Fig. 86, at one end 
of a long runway, Y, of low, movable, covered hurdles, 
which may be shifted so that the ground may be plowed 
to freshen it, and a trough, such as we are about to 
describe, at the other end. In both the side views of 
this feed trough, Figs. 123 and 124, will be seen a row 
of upright slats, through which the birds thrust their 
heads to feed. The fowls stand on the floor, a. The 

206 



FOK SOFT FEED. 



20^ 



feed is placed in the box or trough, n v, the lid, n, being 
raised for that purpose. The pieces of scantling, r, s, u, 
are the frame of the feed trough. The feed rests, of 
course, on the bottom board, v. When the doors, d, are 




FIG. 99. AVOODEN- SPOOL, FRAME, ETC. 



dropped, as in Fig. 123, the fowls can put their heads 
between the upright slats and reach the feed, but when 
these doors are being raised toward the position shown in 



208 



AX EGG FARM. 



Fig. 124, the -birds will naturally withdraw their heads, 
the doors being raised gently and gradually. 

The construction of the doors is as follows : The 
board, d, Figs. 123 and 124, is of equal width at both 
end's and the tapering board, c, is nailed to it firmly. 




FIG. 100. TRANSVERSE SECTION OK FIGURE 99. 



This board, c, is protected at e by a bolt or pin, so that 
d and c both rise together when the cord, i, is pulled. 
At/, g, there is a slot cut in the hoard, d, to enable it to 
be raised or lowered without bein g stopped by the pin, e. 
A flat, horseshoe-shaped piece o\ i >n, /, g, is attached 



FOR SOFT FEED. 



209 



to the board, d, next to and partly surrounding the slot, 
to give d strength when the cord i is pulled. 

All the cords pass over 
side pulleys fastened to 
posts, and all these cords 
are attached to a wire, h, 
so that when this wire is 
pulled all the doors, d, c, 
are raised, as in Fig. 124. 
At the top of each post 
is another side pulley over 
which passes a cord, one 
end of which is attached 
to a weight and the other 
to the door, d, the latter 
being slightly the heavier. 
These weights render it 
easier, of course, to pull 
the wire, li. We call h a 
■'''wire," because, for out- 
door use, a wire is better 
than a cord, the latter 
being affected by rains. 
In fact, it is well to sub- 
stitute for the cord, i, a 
small chain such as are 
on the market, latterly 
made on purpose for pul- 
ley work. 

In all three cuts, w rep- 
resents a trip gong bell, 
Fig. 126, operated by the 
bell wire, x, which may 
be of annealed steel, No. 
16, sold on spools, Fig. 
127. This bell or some other style of bell, or an aural 
14 




A FEEDIKG SrEVE. 



210 



AN EGG FARM. 



signal of some sort, is necessary, as heretofore explained, 
to call the birds to their meals. 




In Fig. 125 is seen one of the slats, m, nailed by toe- 
ing, as all the slats are, to the narrow side board or rim, 



FOR SOFT FEED. 211 

I, which runs the whole length of the feed trough, to 
hold the feed and to keep the birds from wasting it. 
The door is guided by passing between ~b and c. The 
floor, a, is nailed to the crosspiece, o, which is spiked to 
a short post. Of course, there are^ boards and wire net- 
ting to keep the birds from getting under the floor, a, 
and from flying above the slats; but as these do not 
directly concern the feeding apparatus they were omitted 
from the cut. The wire should be kept constantly taut 
by a weight of one to three pounds attached to each 
end, where the wire should pass over a pulley wheel 
about six inches in diameter. The weight furthest from 
the operator should meet a shelf and find rest at the 
same instant the doors, d, strike the ground, the weight 
remaining on this shelf until the operator pulls the wire 
again. The weight near the operator should be only 
just heavy enough to take up the slack of the wire. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

THE ALTERNATE AND PARALLEL SYSTEMS. 

The shape and arrangement of the tilt boxes should 
vary to meet the requirements of the poultry keeper. 
Instead of the openings on the tilt boxes for ingress and 
egress being at the end, as in Figs. 71, 76, 78 and 141, 
it will be necessary to have them on the side, in case of 
an extensive plant for winter chicks, when they are 
warmed by hot- water pipes in the usual way. But, 
whether the openings are at the side or the end, the 
ingress and egress is cut off at the half tilt. 

When the exit openings are at the ends of the tilt 
boxes, a stationary box or apartment alternates Avith a 
tilt box in a row or series, hence, for the sake of con- 
venience, we will call this the alternate method. Another 
method we call the parallel method, in which the tilt 
box, if for grown fowls, may be twenty, fifty, or one 
hundred feet, or more, long, divided by partitions into 
sections for the various flocks, the stationary boxes 
being in a row adjoining and parallel to the row of tilt 
boxes, and the exit openings of the tilt boxes being at 
the side. The parallel system will be fully explained 
further on. 

The description of the indoor exerciser for grown 
fowls on the alternate system is as follows : In the 
interior views, Figs. 77 and 128, P is a passage for the 
attendant. This house is built with its sidewalks mostly 
underground, therefore the windows are set high and 
not shown in these two cuts, although the camera has 
revealed the light from them on the floor of the passage. 

212 



THE ALTERNATE AND PARALLEL SYSTEMS. 



213 



*ti 



The small coops with slanting sides, Fig. 77, under the 
tilt box, T. are to shut birds 
in temporarily, for sale or 
other purposes, and have 
nothing to do with the exer- 
ciser, bnt are put there to 
utilize the vacant space under 
the front portion of the tilt 
boxes, the slant at the front 
of these coops being designed 
to keep tli em out of the way 
of the attendant's feet. As i 
is obvious, Figs. 77 and 128 g 
both represent the same in- ' 
terior. In each cut, a station- % 
ary box is in the foreground a 
and stationary boxes alternate < 
with tilt boxes all along the ^ 
line through the whole length <* 
of the building. Under the % 
stationary boxes are laying § 
apartments, fifteen inches Z 
".between joints," in which o 
are nests which are acces- g 
sible to the attendant from t 
the passage, P. § 

The exits for the fowls to P 
gain access to their yards from 
the stationary boxes are not 
shown in Figs. 77 and 128, as 
they are on the side of the 
building opposite the passage. 
The side of the tilt box repre- 
sented at T rises at the begin- 
ning of tilting. By reference 
to the ground plan, Fig. ]30, 



& 



in 



21-4 



A2S" EGG FARM. 




and the transverse section, Fig. 129, the positions of 
some of the most important parts of the frame of this 
building are shown, the letters referring to the same 

sticks of 2x4 and 2x6 in 
all four cuts. Figs. 128 and 

129 show the slant of the 
"shed roof." Through- 
out Figs. 77, 128, 129 and 

130 the same letters indi- 
cate the same things. 

In the ground plan, Fig. 
130, the foundations of the 
brick walls at the sides 
are shown, the end walls 
not being included, as a 
portion only of a continu- 
ous building several hun- 
dred feet long is intended 
to be represented. The 
width of the building in 
Fig. 129 is 8 1-4 ft., the 
passage, P, being 8 ft. 
wide. There is a space of 
1 ft. between the tilt boxes 
and the wall to give room 
for tilting. The posts, a, 
d, c and o, support the 
roof, the tilt boxes, station- 
ary boxes and n e s t i n g 
rooms, a and d being 2x4 
and c and o being 2x6. 

Figure 129 is a trans- 
verse section substantially 
at an imaginary line passing through a in the ground 
plan, Fig. 130, the liberty usual in such cases, however, 
permits c, b and g to appear in the cut, although these 




FIG. 104. LID OF FEED SIEVE. 



THE ALTERNATE AND PARALLEL SYSTEMS. 215 

three sticks are slighthy further toward the rear or back- 
ground than the post, a. In Fig. 129, E represents an 
exit for the fowls, closed by a* small door opening up- 
ward, as shown by the dotted lines. IT is a window, like- 
wise hinged at the top and opening in the same way as 
the exits. The exit doors, leading to the outside yards 
in a building hundreds of feet long, are all raised or 
lowered at one operation, and the same applies to the 
windows, although the device for accomplishing this im- 
portant purpose, a great labor saver, could not well be 
shown in this cut. As the windows and exit doors fall 
and are held in place by their weight, augmented by a 
brick or a portion of one attached to each, or, as is the 
case in our own building, photographed for Figs. 77 and 




FIG. 105. END VIEW OF FEED SIEVE; 

128, a box of sand nailed to each, the slanting position 
when closed is essential to the success of this plan. As 
is plain, e and/ are puiiines that extend the whole length 
of the building, being shown, in three of the cuts. In 
Fig. 129, the slight notching at the edge of c shows where 
the iron axle of Crests. The building is underground 
as far as the tops of the brick walls in this cut and the 
roof is of inch boards covered with the best quality of 
felt paper and finished with, two coats best cement applied 
hot, and on top of all is placed eight inches of straw, and 
on the straw cornstalks and brush to withstand the wind. 
This sort of roof and the underground feature secure 
warmtli in winter and coolness in summer. When the 
temperature is 90 degrees outside it is but 80 degrees 
inside. 



216 



AN EGG FARM. 




THE ALTERNATE AND PARALLEL SYSTEMS. 217 

The tilt boxes are placed with the under surfaces of 
their floors 2 1-2 ft. higher than the floor of the passage, 
and 'are 2 1-4 ft. high, with bottoms 3 1-2 ft.x6 ft., the 
6 ft. distance being parallel to the passage. The sta- 
tionary box serves as a roost and is 5 ft. 3 in.x3 ft., the 
3 ft. distance being parallel to the passage. The floor of 
the stationary box is 8 in. higher than the floor of the 

tilt box, to allow for the depth 

of the li fcter in the latter. The 

posts which support the tilt 

fig. 107. spiral spring. boxes, stationary boxes and 

feed cylinders, see a and d in 

Figs. 77, 129 and 130, and a and c in Tigs. 129 and 130, 

extend from the floor of the building to the roof. 

Passing now to a consideration of the indoor exerciser 
on the parallel plan, the reader is asked to turn to Fig. 
132, representing a perspective of a house for layers or a 
section of it, enough to show the idea, Fig. 117 being a 
transverse section of the same, Fig. 118 a longitudinal 
section, and Fig. lo5 a ground plan, the same letters in 
each of these four referring to the same things. The 
parallel system is preferable in some important respects 
to the alternate system just described. 

The elevation, 
Fig. 132, needs little 
description, and we 
call attention only to 
the windows, which, 
as will be observed, 
are slanting when closed, as explained in the case of the 
building previously described. In ordinary windows, the 
sash are made smaller than the window frames, the latter 
enclosing the former. But when a large number of win- 
dows are to be raised or lowered simultaneously in a 
building, the sash should be larger than the window 
frames and the former should overlap the latter so that 




FIG. 108. TOP VIEW OF SIEVE. 



218 



AN EGG FARM. 



no swelling of the sash by dampness will cause it to stick. 

The sash must have 
weights, preferably flat 
bars of metal, fastened on 
to hold them down snugly 
in case of hard winds. If 
the casings were set per- 
pendicularly, a hard wind 
would be apt to move the 
sash, in spite of the 
weight, at times when 
the admission of cold air 
would be very undesirable. 
To the bottom of each 
sash an ordinary sash cord 
is attached, each cord 
passing through a screw 
pulley, Fig. 134, fastened 
to the underside of the 
roof. The whole series of 
cords is attached to a half- 
inch iron pipe, located a 
few feet below the screw 
pulleys, and attached to 
convenient portions of the 
building where it is the 
most out of the way. This 
pipe is, of course, as long 
as the row of windows and 
is set loosely in staples or 
in holes bored in wood so 
as to be free to turn. For 
each cord, a small hole is 
drilled through the pipe 
to receive a nail, to which 
the cord is attached in 




THE ALTERNATE AND PARALLEL SYSTEMS. 219 

such a way that it will be wound up' on the pipe when 
the latter is turned, by means of a large hand wheel, Fig. 
133, which is attached to one end of the pipe within 
reach of the operator. 

The windows may all be opened a fraction of an inch, 
or several inches or wide open, with the greatest ease 
and dispatch in two or three seconds, and partly or 
wholly closed as quickly, and can be moved many times 
a clay to suit varying wind and weather, a very impor- 
tant thing which would be impossible if each window 
were to be moved by hand. In a large establishment, 
like ours photographed for this book, there are several 
hundred windows, and it must be recollected that violent 
gales sometimes rise so suddenly that twenty men or fifty 
men could not close them all by hand quickly enough. 
The set of windows in Fig. 132 is on the same side as the 
tilt boxes, and a similar row of windows is supposed to 
be on the side not shown in this cut. The yards are also 
on the side not shown, but their position is indicated by 
y in Fig. 117. 

Figure 117 gives a tranverse section substantially 
through m in the ground plan, Fig. 135. The yard fences, 
y, run in a direction parallel to the end walls of the build- 
ing and enclose as many yards as there are tilt boxes. 
The posts, c 1 and c 2 , reach to the roof. The short post, 
Tc, forms one of the supports to the passage platform, g. 
This platform is the principal line of travel used by the 
attendant, who can, however, also go the whole length of 
the building between c 1 and the wall, but in doing so 
must open a door at each room he passes through. 
Nearly all the work is done in passage, g. Labor saving- 
forbids handling doors, except when unavoidable, and, 
be it repeated, commercial poultry keeping can be prof- 
itable only when the utmost care and ingenuity are 
employed in every operation, from a to izzard, to save 



220 



AN EGG FARM. 




labor. The fowls have the 
use of the floor, f, from the 
tilt box, t, to the wall at y. 
The dots at d show the 
position of a feed cylinder 
over the tilt box, and the 
dots at e show the position 
of the call cylinder, which 
drops feed to keep the birds 
out of the tilt box while the 
latter is being tilted. The 
operation of this sort of tilt 
box with opening on side 
will be described in another 
place. The pit, p, is a foot 
deep, which is deeper than 
is needed for tilting, but as, 
in spite of all precautions, 
a fowl will sometimes escape 
and, roaming through the 
passage, g, blunder over be- 
hind the tilt box next the 
wall, space enough in the 
pit must be afforded to 
avoid crushing the vagrant. 
It will be plain enough that 
the tilt box tilts toward the 
wall and that the surface of 
the ground outside the 
building is not far from the 
top of the underpinning, 
hence p is described as a 
pit. The crosspiece, n, sup- 
ports the floor, r. The tilt 
box aperture to admit the 
fowls is on the side next to 



THE ALTERNATE AND PARALLEL SYSTEMS. 221 




222 AN EGG FAKM, 

h and the wire netting, i, is to confine a fowl during 
tilting, should one chance to remain in the tilt box, a 
thing very unlikely to occur, however, unless the bird is 
a new acquisition, an untrained recruit. 

The longitudinal section of the same building, Fig. 
118, is substantially on a line through c 2 in the trans- 
verse section, Fig. 117, and through the same upright 
post, c 2 , in the ground plan, Fig. 135. In Fig. 118, the 
room between c 2 and c 2 is given to one flock, that is, the 
space is devoted to one apartment or stationary box, two 
call cylinders, e, e, being employed so as 
to drop grain over space enough to give 
all the birds a fair chance. 

There is only a single perch for each 
flock and this is not shown, as it is not 
in line, but it is placed over the roost 
floor, r, and extends the whole length of 
the room from c 2 to c 2 . A scantling- v, 

FIG. 112. CASTER °' ' 

wheel under reaching from w to w, supports the floor 
shelf. £ £j ie -Qegting- apartment, x, tbe top of 

this apartment being indicated by u, just over which 
runs the cylinder axle. The movable nest boxes are 
made so that they can be easily reached by the attendant 
from the passage, g, in Fig. 117. 

The ground plan, Fig. 135, calls for but slight descrip- 
tion after it has been compared with the vertical sec- 
tions. The space separated by the dotted lines in which 
the blocks, m, stand, is, of course, devoted to the con- 
tinuous tilt box divided by partitions into smaller tilt 
boxes. This multiform or compound tilt box is as long- 
as the whole building, minus a little at one end, where 
the stairs are which lead to the attendant's passage, 
these stairs being indicated by s, s, near which is the 
outside door. This multiform tilt box muse have 
attached either the winch, Fig. 138, or the long lever, 
Fig. 88, and, in case the latter is employed, a short wing 




THE ALTERNATE AKD PARALLEL SYSTEMS. 



223 



or ell must be added to the main build- 
ing, to give the lever room to describe 
an arc. 

The rooms, or stationary boxes as we 
have named their equivalent in other 
cuts, for the separate flocks may be seen 
on this ground plan if the reader will 
imagine a line drawn from each block, m, 
through h, c 2 , c 1 , and thence to the wall. 
By referring to the transverse section, Fig. 
117, it will be obvious that each flock will 
have a nesting apartment and a roost, a 
ladder being furnished for the convenience 
of the birds. The need of a piece of coarse 
wire netting under and at one side of the 
call cylinders will be evident, to keep the 
fowls away and, at the same time, allow 
feed to drop on the floor. 

Among other merits of the parallel plan 
for arranging the tilt boxes, we enumer- 
ate : First, the birds have the benefit of 
the space under the passage, g ; second, 
the nests, the perches and all the feed 
cylinders are very convenient of access by 
the attendant, and third, the tilt box is 
narrow in proportion to its length, thereby 
facilitating the tilting. Build all the 
boxes narrow and of thin, light lumber. 

The tilt box is, as before stated, one 
continuous box supported by the axle, I, 
which rests on the blocks, m, in such a 
position that when the tilt box is level 
its underside is one inch higher than the 
upper surface of the floor, /. The con- 
tinuous box, several hundred feet long, is 
divided into apartments by board parti- 



224 



AJS" EGG FARM. 



tions, these apartments being in length the same as from 
the center of one block, m, to the center of the next 
block, m. 

It is important to have the axle for tilt boxes for 
layers large and, strong, if it is a long one. The strain 




FIG. 114. A SUBSTITUTE FOB TILT BOX. SEE P. 161. 

caused by the section used by one flock of fowls is not 
great, but, by extending the multiform box through a 
long building, the strain becomes greater than would be 
supposed. The axle can safely be of smaller calibre at 
the end farthest from the operator. For a building one 
hundred feet or more in length, a two-inch iron pipe, 



THE ALTERNATE AXD PARALLEL SYSTEMS. 



!-<!5 



reinforced by the collar at each joint, Fig. 
35, is suitable for the first fifty feet at the 
end nearest the attendant. The lever, if one 
is used, should be six to twelve feet long, ac- 
cording to the length of the axle. A winch, 
Fig. 138, is preferable if the axle is long, and 
the handle of this winch should be strong 
and made to be grasped by both hands. 

If there are ten or twelve tilt box apart- 
ments attached to the same axle, they should 
be 3 1-2x8 ft. and 2 1-1 ft. deep. If fifteen 
or twenty apartments, they should be 3x10 
ft. or 3x12 ft., according to the size of the 
flocks ; for it is readily understood that the 
narrower the tilt boxes, other things being 
equal, the easier it is to rotate them. After 
determining their width, you contrive the 
width of the building and the location of the 
posts, which last determines the size of the 
stationary boxes or apartments under the call 
cylinders. In Figs. 117 and 135 the tilt box 
is 3 ft. wide. Be sure to avoid making your 
tilt boxes too wide. Use thin, light-weight 
boards. 

In Fig. 117, and in all other instances in 
the parallel system, the birds must enter at 
the side of the tilt boxes, of course, as in 
Figs. 131, 142 and 144. Also the tilt boxes 
for brooder chicks should be rounded a little 
on the front side. In Fig. 142, S represents 
the stationary box, Y the yard out of doors, 
T the tilt box, and Ja curved flap to shut 
off ingress and egress at the opening between 
T and S. Compare this cut with Fig. 73 
and observe the dotted line, which shows the 
half tilt and the full tilt, The feed cylin- 
15 



K 



226 



AX EGG FARM. 



der, or a feed shelf if preferred, is at 10 and the feed 
drops toward T through the curved partition of wire, 
one-inch mesh. In hoth cuts, this wire mesh is indi- 
cated in various places by small crosses. As is obvious, 




the chicks cannot enter the space over the tilt box be- 
tween S and Y. The reader should study carefully the 
ground plan, Fig. 140. P is a passage or alley for the 
attendant, dug in the ground two feet, so as to bring 
the floor, 8, to a hight convenient for the attendant, 



THE ALTERNATE AND PARALLEL SYSTEMS. 227 

in which case, if S is on a level with the ground out- 
side the brooder house, a pit must be dug to give the tilt 
box room to turn, as in the case of the tilt box for grown 
fowls, Fig. 117, where t is the tilt box and p the pit. 
The construction of the floor of the passage for the at- 
tendant on the same level with the stationary boxes, 
brooders or layers, as in Fig. 136, we utterly condemn. 




i * J$ \ 



FIU. 117. TRANSVERSE SECTION OF HOUSE FOR LAYERS. (SEE FIG. 132.) 



The rules of convenience and labor saving are against 
it, and why so many manufacturers of brooders perpetu- 
ate the nuisance is past our comprehension. As well 
might the counter of the salesman or the workbench of 
the mechanic be on a level with the floor. The brooder 
is the poulterer's. workbench. 

In the parallel plan for brooder house, the tilt boxes 
should be double, being built for two broods with a par- 



228 



AN EGG FARM. 



tition of wire netting, one-inch mesh. See Fig. 131. 
For the younglings, this is better than the continuous or 
multiform tilt box used for layers, Fig. 117. In the ground 
plan, Fig. 140, the wire partition dividing the double 
tilt boxes is represented by small crosses. Each brood 
has an alley, e, six inches wide, communicating with Y 
and 8, this alley being closed to suit occasions by small 
doors, one at each end. These doors, however, are not 
shown in the cut. 



F 



FIG. 118. LONGITUDINAL, SECTION OF HOUSE FOE LAYERS. (SEE FIG. 132.) 

If the brooder house is a long one, similar in external 
appearance to the one shown in Fig. 103, and heated by 
hot water, the parallel system should be followed, and 
by a little ingenuity room can be contrived to locate tilt 
boxes in any brooder house that is constructed substan- 
tially like Fig. 137, although not built with reference 
to their adoption. If, however, each brooder is heated 
by a separate lamp, the alternate system, Figs. 102, 103 
and 141, should be followed. In any brooder house 



THE ALTERNATE AND PARALLEL SYSTEMS. 



229 



already built, that is arranged essentially like Fig. 136, 
tilt boxes can be introduced. Whenever tilt boxes are 
put into a building of this sort or of the kind shown in 
Fig. 102, it will be necessary to dig a pit in which the 




winch or lever may turn and the attendant stand while 
operating the same. 

If you hatch chickens artificially on a small scale, 
using only two, three or four brooders at a time, the 
best way will be to adopt the alternate plan and have no 
continuous axle with its lever or crank, and dispense also 
with feed cylinders or feed shelves. Rotate each tilt box 



230 



AN EGG FARM. 



separately, by hand, just as you would rock a cradle, 
each having a separate axle made by nailing a stick, one 
and one-half or two inches square, across the bottom of 
the tilt box, at the under side, and letting it project a 
couple of inches beyond the ends of the box, these ends 
to be rounded, and each to rest in a notch of correspond- 
ing size cut in the edge of a horizontal bearing piece of 

inch board. A good 
shape for such a box is 
seen in Fig. 143. 

Of course, you walk to 
each tilt box in succes- 
sion, and do without feed 
cylinders by sprinkling a 
pinch of millet or other 
fine feed by hand twice 
every time you tilt the 
box, one pinch to call 
them cut of the tilt box 
to begin with. No signal 
will be needed to call 
them. Their cpiick eyes 
will watch your every 
motion. You can set a 
tilt box, then a brooder or stationary box, for they are 
both the same thing; then a tilt box, then a brooder, 
right alongside of an alley three feet wide, which is sunk 
two feet in the ground for the attendant to walk in, or 
you can set the brooder and the frame which supports 
the tilt box on legs two feet long, as in Figs. 78, 79 and 
80. The brooders should communicate with little yards 
or long narrow runways, with small outdoor exercisers 
attached, but for the first fifteen or twenty days of the 
younglings' existence there need be no going out doors at 
all, if you operate the tilt box often. The floor of the 
stationary box or brooder should be two inches higher 




FIG. 120. CRANK MADE OF PIPING. 




THE ALTERNATE AND PARALLEL SYSTEMS. 231 

than the floor of the tilt box, to allow for the thickness 
of the two-inch layer of cut hay or chaff in the latter. 
You can use lamps and either hot water or hot air for 
your brooders, when you have but a small number. 

Now, if you have eight, ten or more brooders occu- 
pied at the same time, use the alternate system aud 
sunken alley above described, and attach all your tilt 
boxes to a continuous axle furnished with a crank and 
use feed cylinders, 
as in Fig. 79. - The 
axle may be of three- 
quarter inch or inch 
iron pipe and must FlG - 121 - piece for attaching shaft 

i i-, TO SPOOL. 

pass under the sta- 
tionary boxes, or brooders or hovers, as they may be called, 
on its way from one tilt box to the next. 

Under this plan, of course, you do not have to go from 
one box to the other, but stand at one end of the axle, 
where you tilt all at once. The quantity and kind of 
feed needed for each brood, according to the number of 
birds composing it and their age, is provided for when 
the feed cylinders are charged, which will ordinarily be 
but once a day, with the dry grain, which should be the 
main feed. 

Green stuff and meat may be fed in the usual manner, 
it being not adapted to the feed cylinder. One of the 
merits of the system of poultry keeping by machinery is 
that the birds, both young and old, can digest plain, 
dry, uncooked grain and thrive upon it with very little 
else, excepting green stuff in slight allowance, gravel and 
water, if they are compelled to work hard for nearly 
all they get. Meat, vegetables, and the various prepared 
articles of food take too much time, besides costing ordi- 
narily more than grain. Feeding milk is an uncleanly 
practice, daubing and soiling beaks and feathers more or 
less. A little green stuff is useful, not, as some persons 



232 AN EGG PARM. 

have claimed, on account of its nutritive constituents 
being better than those of grain, but because the acids 
of green stuff and fruit help all omnivorous or graminiv- 
orous animals, man included, to digest the grain food, 
which is the main reliance. No matter how nutritious 




the diet on board ship, the sailors without fruit or 
vegetables will have scurvy after a while. 

If your establishment contains fifteen or twenty brood- 
ers, or upwards, stick to the sunken alley, but change 
from the alternate to the parallel system, Figs. 140, 142 



THE ALTERNATE AND PARALLEL SYSTEMS. 233 



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234 AX EGG FAR1I. 

and 144, and use hot-water pipes of the usual style, Figs. 
136 and 139. 

"What has been said, regarding three different methods 
of operation with chick tilt boxes, applies to layer tilt 
boxes with the exception that, when you have but two, 
three or four of these and walk to each, it will not be 
convenient to take hold of the tilt box directly, it being 
too heavy and swinging in too big an arc to be moved 
easily and followed conveniently on its trip, but a short 
wooden lever will be needed, which may be nailed to 
each box. If you have five or more layer tilt boxes on 
one axle, a call bell and a feed shelf, the latter operated 
by a hammer held in the hand will be cheaper than feed 
cylinders. A swinging feed shelf can be very readily 
suspended when it is indoors, the suspension cords or 
wires being attached to some part of the building. 

The chaff or litter for layer tilt boxes should be fine, 
and for chick tilt boxes very fine. Coarse, stemmy hay 
cut short is very good. It must be somewhat heavy, 
for if too light and fluffy it does not tumble well in tilt- 
ing. In Nebraska, Kansas, California and intermediate 
alfalfa regions, use the finely broken stems and leaves 
remaining after the alfalfa seed has been threshed out. 
There is nothing else so good for the purpose. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

HEALTHY, VIGOROUS BIRDS. 

The introduction of mechanical contrivances in tend- 
ing fowls marks a new era in poultry raising on a large 
scale. Hereafter the poulterer, working under the old 
system, can no more compete with those who have the 
new machinery than he can raise hay for cattle and use 
only scythes in competition with stockmen who have 
mowing machines. The ordinary scratching room, or 
"scratch pen," would be all right if the time could be 
afforded to mix grain with the litter often and a little at 
a time, but nobody ever did or ever will do this thor- 
oughly by hand, daily, for any length of time. If done 
by hand it will be at a loss, and the more you do it 
Avithout machinery the more you will lose. The country 
is full of abandoned incubators and brooders because 
the eggs used for hatching lacked, at the start, the 
vitality that nothing but exercise of the parent stock 
could bestow, and also such chicks as could be coaxed 
out of the shell died by inches for want of exercise in 
the brooders. Writers on poultry urge the sprinkling 
of millet on litter for the young broods, to induce 
scratching exercise ; but doing this two or three times a 
day amounts to but little. It will slightly retard the 
mortality, the "leg weakness," the general debility and 
the "plastering up" at the rear of the body of the 
poor unfortunates, but will not wholly prevent these 
troubles. 

Speaking of the disgusting and disheartening trouble 
last mentioned, complaint of which appears in the cor- 

235 



236 



AN EGG FARM. 




respondence columns of the poultry papers over and 
over again, it hardly occurs in case of chicks running at 
large in one instance in a 
thousand, we might say. 
It is wrongly attributed to 
looseness of the bowels, 
while its real cause is weak- 
ness of the muscles around 
the vent. These muscles 
are weak because all the 
other muscles of the body 
are weak. When the mus- 
cular system is toned up by 
the exercise on a free range 
while constantly hunting, 
literally, for "grub," one 
set of muscles concerned in 
evacuation throws back, or 
separates, the feathers 
around the vent with force, 
while with equal force an- 
other set of muscles expels 
the droppings. Much of 
the so-called diarrhoea is 




FIG. 125. FEED TROUGH APPARATUS. 

not diarrhoea at all. The chicks are weak for lack of 
exercise, the whole system is enfeebled, but the bowels 



HEALTHY, VIGOROUS BIROS. 



237 




FIG. 126. TRIP GONG 
BELL. 



are not suffering a whit more than all the other organs. 
The troublesome symptom of clogging near the vent is 
almost invariably caused by lack of exercise, but any- 
thing else that debilitates will cause 
it, and it is not necessarily an ac- 
companiment of diarrhoea, dysen- 
tery, or any other specially diseased 
state of the bowels, or of abnormal 
or vitiated droppings. 

These last- may be in fully as nor- 
mal a condition as any of the other 
waste products or Various secretions 
of the animal economy. The 
feathers begin to be clogged, in the 
first place, by the thin matter that 
is voided last, the muscles concerned 
becoming tired toward the close of 
the orgasm. A powerful muscular action is necessary, 
to throw aside the numerous feathers surrounding the 
vent and to discharge the thin matter 
with sufficient force to prevent any drib- 
bling or soiling of the surrounding parts. 
The chick, debilitated in every muscular 
tissue by unnatural confinement, has not 
the strength to prevent the leakage of a 
drop or two, which, adhering to the 
feathers, forms the nucleus of an un- 
sightly deposit, which increases with 
every evacuation. The vent itself is not 
clogged. The deposit is outside the pas- 
sage, not in it. The poultry keeper is apt 
to try a change of feed, thinking that the 
trouble consists in bad digestion, or he 
finds fault with the brooder and changes from bot- 
tom heat to top heat, or vice versa. But the main 
cause is lack of exercise, and no style of brooder or 




FIG. 127. WIRE 
FOR GONGS. 



238 



AK EGG FARM. 



change of feed can possibly cure or prevent the symp- 
toms in question. 

Let us be understood. This is the first time, so far 
as the writer is aware, that the true nature of most of 




FIG. 128. INTERIOR Al/fERNATE SYSTEM. SEE FIGS. 77 AND 130. 

the so-called diarrhoea, looseness of the bowels and clog- 
ging of the vent has been published. It is not claimed 
here that the bowels and the evacuations are in a per- 
fectly healthy state when the dribbling matter previouslv 



HEALTHY, VIGOROUS BIRDS. 



239 



described begins to adhere to the feathers. When there 
is deterioration of health and strength on account of 
dearth of exercise, or on account of jostling and crowd- 
ing at night in an insufficiently warmed brooder, result- 




ing in loss of sleep, every organ and function of the 
body is likely to be more or less impaired. What is 
asserted is that the bowels are not primarily or specially 
in fault. The whole digestive system may be as well off 
as any other part of the chick, and may be, in fact, the 



240 



AST EGG FARM. 



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HEALTHY, VIGOROUS BIRDS. 



241 



nearest to a healthy state of all the various organs ; yet, 
since there is a great deal of muscular strength necessary 
to the proper per- 
formance of the act 
of evacuation, with- 
out such strength 
there will be soiling 
of the feathers, which 
will go on from bad 
to worse. 

Reader, if you 
would test the cor- 
rectness of the above, 
take a score, — or fifty 
or more if you have 
them, — of brooder 
chicks that have been 
confined in a manner 
to prevent exercise. 
Select only those that 
have the unsightly 
protuberance adher- 
ing to the feathers 
near the vent. Re- 
move the deposit, and 
keep removing it care- 
fully during the early 
stages of the experi- 
ment we are about to 
describe, using warm 
water and patience, 
and taking pains not 
to injure either the 
flesh or the feathers. 
Separate your afflicted specimens into two broods, im- 
partially, as regards size and health. Give each brood 
16 




.242 



AN EGG FABM. 



the same heat, sun, fresh air, water, and everything else 
down to the smallest detail. Only and excepting this, 
to wit : You contrive plenty of exercise for one of the 
squads, and for the other, not. Kemove the filth from 




the posterior parts of all the birds in both squads if it 
reappears, for a week or so after separation. This is so 
as. to be able to detect results after the exercise has been 
allowed time to take effect. The division into two 



HEALTHY, VIGOROUS BIRDS. 



243- 




FIG. 133. LARGE HAND WHEEL. 



squads should be made before the specimens in either 
group become too debilitated to take exercise ; because, 
you- see, if exercise is to be tested, exercise must actually 
appear, in one squad, 
as a factor in the ex- 
periment. We will 
tell you beforehand, 
good reader, how it 
will turn out. You 
will not only find 
that exercise will pre- 
vent accumulations 
near the vent, but by 
careful watching you 
will discover that 
your squad which 
possesses strengthen- 
ed muscles performs 
the act of evacuation in a vigorous manner, thro wino- 
aside with force the feathers of the parts concerned and 
holding them rigidly till the last portion of the urine, 
as well as the more solid matter, has been 
vigorously ejected, while you will also perceive 
that the reverse is true of the other squad, 
which exhibits only feeble orgasms, dribbling 
and befouling. 

When young chicks are under the care of 

the mother hen and are allowed freedom they 

are in motion nearly all the time in daylight 

hours. Plenty of exercise keeps up the proper 

balance between the muscular, the nervous, 

the circulatory and the digestive systems, and 

tones up every portion and function of the 

body. In such a case, there will be not more than one 

or two per cent of the young birds showing posterior 

parts befouled, and such birds were most certainly badly 




FIG. 134. 
SCREW PUL- 
LEY. 



244 AN EGG FA KM. 

hatched and so handicapped in the race of life, or they 
met with some injury or setback. Sometimes a whole 
season will not develop a single instance of the unsightly 
pest in flocks aggregating hundreds. Under natural con- 
ditions domestic birds, like their wild cousins, will have 
perfectly clean plumage. Folks say it is necessary for 
young chicks to "get at the ground." It is necessary for 
them to "get at" exercise. 

In the instance of brooder chicks, throwing grain on 
top of a pile of litter does not amount to much. No 
matter how loose the litter may be when it is first put 
into the scratch box, the constant tramping of the 
chicks soon makes it a compact mass and the grain will 
not rattle down through it. Throwing them grain 
induces a momentary scramble but very little scratching. 
If the attendant stirs up the litter, using a rake or fork, 
it takes him over twenty minutes for sixty flocks, to 
do this properly and not stampede the birds, even when 
every door and other appliance at the brooders and 
scratching places is constructed so that it can be done as 
handily as possible, while unless the brooders and their 
belongings are made with special reference to this rou- 
tine it will take forty minutes. With the indoor exer- 
ciser it can be done in- one minute. That is, the 
machine saves the time of twenty men, at the very least. 
The best farm machinery saves the time of only eight to 
twelve men. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

BUSINESS POULTRY FARMING. 

Throughout the industrial realm everywhere the mod- 
ern maxim is: "Use a machine instead of a man, 
wherever possible/' In field, factory and mine, and on 
shipboard, progress demands the best of facilities for 
doing those things which are to be repeated over and 
over ten thousand times. On the other hand, when an 
operation is to be repeated but seldom, you must beware 
lest you lavish so much time on a machine to do it with 
that it costs more than the profits. 

As we have seen, the surplus eggs and poultry from 
farms and rural places will be put on the market irre- 
spective of profit, and the rapid extension of the trolley 
lines changes many urban residents to suburban ; in 
other words, they become producers of poultry products 
instead of consumers merely. Therefore, the prices of 
eggs and dressed poultry are low and will continue low. 
To get around the difficulty, the artificial method of 
hatching and rearing has been resorted to by would-be 
broiler raisers on a large scale, so as to get high prices 
by securing chicks in cold weather when the ordinary 
farmer cannot, or does not, do it. But the first trouble 
is that winter eggs do not hatch well because the laying 
stock is in bad condition at that season from lack of exer- 
cise, and the second trouble is, that when you succeed 
in hatching, the chicks cannot exercise in yards in cold 
weather, sleet and snowdrifts. You cannot secure exer- 
cise for them indoors without the aid of machinery, 
unless you spend more time than they are worth. With- 

245 



M6 



AN EGG FARM. 



out exercise so many will die that there will be no 
profits. In a nutshell, without exercise there cannot be 
thrift, and exercise in bad weather cannot be secured 
except at pecuniary loss, unless there are labor-saving 
contrivances. The large establishments will either raise 
chickens in moderate weather under an out-of-door sys- 
tem with plenty of range, and preferably in about the 
latitude of North Carolina and Arkansas, where the 
winters are short and mild, or adopt machinery, or 
allow large and, of course, expensive apartments for 
each flock, or shut up shop. The writer dislikes the 





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IS | SI 

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FIG. 132. GROUND PLAN OF HOUSE FOR LAYERS. (SEE PAGE 132). 



role of dark prophet, and calls attention to the sombre 
truth only in order to show a way out of the difficulties. 
The trouble with large rooms for each flock is the great 
cost. Already cases are appearing where $50,000, and 
even $100,000, is spent on one set of poultry buildings. 
Scores of large poultry farms have been abandoned 
because their owners did not, at the outset, correctly 
estimate the amount of labor needed to run them, which 
is, unless machinery is used, so enormous as to absorb 
the profits, or, more properly, to prevent all profits. 
There are ten thousand steps necessary on poultry farms 
as ordinarily conducted, possessing no labor-saving con- 



BUSINESS POULTKY FARMING. 



247 




248 A1ST EGG FARM. 

trivances, and the day is never long enough, from ear- 
liest dawn till work by lantern light has been prolonged 
till bedtime, to attend to the hundreds of little details. 
On poultry farming as a business there is no one bet- 
ter qualified to speak than that luminous and volumi- 
nous writer for the poultry press, intelligent and careful 
observer, and practical poultry keeper, W. H. Eudd, 
who, moreover, lives in Massachusetts, where poultry 
farms run on a more or less extensive scale are most 
numerous, and besides, his market and provision trade 
in Boston has, for thirty years past, given him an excel- 
lent opportunity to keep track of the progress in raising 
poultry products for the table as a business. He says: 

" Where competent help is a necessity we are very doubtful whether 
it can be employed at a profit; at any rate, we have never known of 
an instance where it has been done." 

Since his utterance, quoted above, there have, how- 
ever, been some very noticeable advances in poultry cul- 
ture. With the aid of the new labor-saving machinery, 
skilled labor can be employed, in connection, of course, 
with a proper number of cheap hands, at a profit in 
poultry raising. There is much light work and routine 
work that can be done by low priced labor when 
machines are the central and governing feature. With- 
out such machinery poultry will not be raised on a large 
scale in the future, any more than grain will be sown by 
hand, reaped with a sickle and threshed with a flail at a 
profit. It will be found cheaper to use comparatively 
small buildings with machinery, than large buildings 
without it. If help cannot be hired in a business, it -is 
no business at all, and it is "not business" to be in such 
a business. 

What would be thought of another industry where no 
employes could be hired at a profit ? The truth is, 
that in cases where a poultry raising establishment 
depending on yards has been run on a moderate scale 



BUSINESS POULTRY FARMING. 



249 







250 



AN EGG PAKM. 



successfully "without machinery, the owner working at 
nothing else the year round, either thoroughbred fowls 
and eggs have been sold at high prices and the business 
kept afloat in that way, or the proprietor has struggled 
and toiled with an amount of care, painstaking and 
unremitting industry, which, if employed in almost any 

other staple calling, in office, 
hotel, mine, factory or store, 
would have paid him better. 
In this last instance, talents 
and zeal have been virtually 
squandered, since they could 
have been employed to better 
advantage elsewhere. As re- 
gards the breeding and sale of 
fowls, or of livestock of any 
species, at fancy prices, it is 
an important branch of rural 
economy and brings about a 
vast amount of good in dis- 
seminating valuable breeds of 
animals all over the country, 
and finally at prices within 
the reach of the multitude. 
But it is not a staple busi- 
ness. In the nature of things, but a few can work at it, 
and in the last analysis its foundation will be found to 
rest on the use which the breed serves in the hands of 
those who produce for sale at ordinary market rates. To 
illustrate, if the regular dairy business is not j)rofitable, 
then the raiser of extra premium Jerseys or Holsteins 
will have no customers. The raisers of prize winners 
must be few in number ; for if like produces like, then 
by natural increase their excellent breed will soon be 
common ; while if, on the other hand, the superior quali- 
ties of their high priced specimens are not hereditary, 




FIG. 138. SHAFT WITH WINCH. 



BUSINESS POULTRY FARMING. 



251 




252 AN EGG FARM. 

then the purchaser has been deluded, and the seller is 
laying snares instead of following a staple business. 

To return to the matter of hiring help, machinery is 
a great promoter of efficient service in all branches of 
industry. The tender of the machine must feed it con- 
tinually and faithfully, or the result is a "dead give 
away." The farm hand may lean on his hoe pretty often 
to see the pigeons fly, or the carpenter may dawdle over 
his jackplane occasionally to gossip, and not be noticed ; 
but if the former is running a gang plow and the latter 
a planing machine, the stoppage of either attracts atten- 
tion. The machine regulates the operative. In these 
latter days, the question whether there is, or should be, 
antagonism between employer and employe is often dis- 
cussed. . The fact is, the old saying, "there is no friend- 
ship in trade," is as true now as when it was first 
uttered. A seller tries to sell dear, and a buyer to buy 
cheap. The wage worker's commodity is his labor. 
Unless he is trying for promotion, or something of that 
sort, he is apt to try to see, not only how much money 
he can get for his work, but how little work he can do 
for his money. 

To prevent shirking, piecework has been found a very 
successful device, and is followed almost invariably 
in great establishments where the nature of the prod- 
uct permits it, careful inspection of the articles pro- 
duced being necessary in order to prevent slighting 
of the work. Working on shares, practiced in connec- 
tion with farming to a great and increasing extent, is 
another way of enlisting the worker's self-interest. 
Where neither piecework nor work on shares is practica- 
ble, then two other things remain which will assist in 
securing faithful service of wage workers at a period 
when the false and pernicious doctrine is rife that any- 
thing that makes work is a benefit to the laborer and 
anything that uses up w r ork is his enemy. The two 



BUSINESS POULTRY FARMING. 



253 



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254 



AN EGG FARM. 



things meant are teams and machinery. Whenever a 
hand is driving a team, it must be kept going. Hence 
the great advantage in hiring help in prairie farming, 
where almost everything is done by teams, over hiring 





in garden work and horticulture, which are mostly han- 
dicrafts. In factories where the hired hand does noth- 
ing but tend a machine, he will be sufficiently regulated 
without working either on shares or by the piece. 

In the large poultry establishments where the Exercis- 



BUSINESS POULTRY FARMING. 255 

ers are used, the feed droppers, whether the latter are 
shelves or cylinders, will always speak for themselves 
and show whether they have been charged at the proper 
time and with the proper quantity, the orders being to 
do everything by rule, of course. The sound of -the call 
bells, supposing that these are operated by employes and 
not by clockwork, will show what is going on at all 
times during the day, so that efficiency of the hired help 
is compelled. This is an advantage not to be despised, 
though an incidental one not considered when, for other 
purposes, poultry machinery was originally planned. 

While the use of the Exerciser is as efficacious in giv- 
ing vitality to eggs designed for hatching as in rearing 
chicks in brooders, its effects are more palpable and 
more quickly discovered in the latter case. Divide fifty 
chicks four days old impartially into two groups of 
twenty-five each. Put one group into a brooder without 
the Exerciser and the other group into a brooder exactly 
the same in all- respects-, excepting -that the latter" has 
the Exerciser attached ; treat both groups scrupu- 
lously alike as regards sun, air, feeding, watering and 
everything else down to the smallest details, and then 
compare the two groups every week till two, three, 
four weeks have elapsed. The contrast will be simply 
marvelous. A great deal of exercise, not merely a little, 
is just what artificially reared chickens need. It goes 
right to the spot. Hitherto the brooder chicks of the 
whole United States have not been allowed, one case in 
fifty, a full plenty of exercise, in winter especially. 
There is, to many persons, a fascination about artificial 
hatching and rearing, besides the expectations of pecu- 
niary gains ; so that thousands on thousands of dollars 
are invested in incubators, with an enormous amount of 
chagrin and disappointment as the almost invariable 
result. Lest the writer should appear to exaggerate on 
this point let an impartial and competent witness, Mr. 



256 



AN EGG FARM. 



Lockwood Myrick, be called to the stand, who, in the 
American Agriculturist, says : 

"There are few enterprises that present such an assurance of large 
and quick profits as that of raising broiler chickens artificially, that 
is, with incubators and brooders, instead of hens. With incubators a 
large number of chicks can be hatched at once and at seasons when 
hens do not sit. The market for broilers is never glutted. They are 
marketed at three months old, the dressed weight (undrawn) ranging 
from three to three and one-half pounds per pair. Eggs cost a trifle 
less than two cents each the year through. The feed consumed by a 
chick in three months costs but ten to twenty cents per pair. 



10 




Y 



FIG. 142. TII.T BOX— PARALLEL SYSTEM. 



"The business has been tried in all parts of the country, but proba- 
bly more extensively at Hammonton, South New Jersey. Within the 
last ten years it is said that more than fifty parties have undertaken 
the brooder business in this township. Abetter soil and climate for 
poultry cannot be found, and if success in the brooder business can be 
expected anywhere, certainly it should be found at Hammonton. 
And what is the result? Of all who have engaged in it only four 
remain, commercially, and of these but two run the whole year, and 
one of these expects to retire shortly. It is safe to say that there is 
not a single brooder man in Hammonton to-day who realizes $500 per 
year net profit, and that is without making any charge for his time. 
One party mentioned above who says he cleared that sum two years 
ago, evidently has not since. Another, after four years' constant effort, 
says he has not received fifty cents a day for his labor. A third, who 



BUSINESS POULTRY FARMING. 257 

runs but a few months annually, says he cannot make $1.50 pet day 
for the time he is in it. 

•'Evidenlly such a wide difference between the ideal and the real 
calls, for an explanation and that can be given in two words, dead 
chicks. Incubators hatch from 50 to 60 per cent of the eggs. The trou- 
ble is not in the hatching, unless that means weakened vitality, but in 
keeping the chicks alive afterward. The death rate is awful, ranging 
from 60 to 80 per cent. When one-half a hatch reach to the broiler 
state, rarely done, the business is moderately profitable. If 60 per 
cent die, a prudent man can about pay his feed bills; when more than 
this die, as is usual, the business is unprofitable. This mortality is 
principally within three weeks from hatching. One of the first pain- 
ful duties that awaits the novice is the burial of chicks ; they are often 
buried by the bucketful daily. 

"Practical men differ in placing blame for the mortality upon brood- 
ing or feeding. Many kinds of brooders have been tried, using top 
heat, bottom heat, heating with hot-water pipes and with single 
lamps, but the chicles die about the same with all. Feeding is a mat. 
ter of great importance triat has been most carefully studied, but no 
satisfactory ration has been found, or none than can entirely over- 
come the ill effects of imperfect brooding, and no brooder has been used 
that can overcome the ill effects of improper feeding if the trouble is 
in the ration. The "infant mortality" is the great cause of failure. 
Alter investing $1,000 or more and losing a year's time, the average 
man sells at a sacrifice to a new enthusiast, who in turn sells again or 
dismantles the houses and devotes the land to more profitable uses. 
In the light of Hammonton's ten years' experience, it is plain that 
until some better system of artificial brooding is devised, the business 
is a very hazardous one; it eannot compete with the hen." 

The above is very unwelcome to a host of people who 
have been hoping to find in broiler raising a sure path to 
fortune. Chicks of all gallinaceous species of fowls are 
so constituted in their essential physical nature that a 
tremendous amount of exertion is absolutely necessary, 
not only to thrift but to life itself. They are so con- 
structed that without almost continual activity of their 
organs of locomotion the proper balance between their 
muscular system and their digestive and respiratory sys- 
tems is lost. Their whole constitution becomes impaired 
because the equilibrium of vital forces ordained in 
nature has been broken up. 

The Hammonton chicks died for the same reason that 
brooder chicks by the thousands have died all over the 
country. The heat and ventilation in the brooder and 

17 



258 AN EGG FARM. 

the ration might both be right at Hammonton and yet 
the "infant mortality" be appalling. The riddle is 
solved. Canaries and young chickens are among the 
most active animals in the world. Nature is not a 
clumsy architect. Their hearts, lungs and digestive 
organs sustain an intimate relation to their muscles, 
and the harmony of parts in the make-up of an animal 
must be respected. When older the chicks could sur- 
vive enforced idleness and inaction. But they are deli- 
cate little balls of down 



FIG. 143. -LIGHT TILT BOX. 



at an early age unless 

'■\ gradually made robust 

gte / by working for what 

*'/ they get. If you fight 

nature you will be 
-f- whipped every time. 

Kaisers of brooder 

chicks all over the coun- 
try, who achieve a partial success, repeatedly testify that 
allowing the younglings the liberty of an outside yard 
always checks the mortality perceptibly. 

But it will soon become generally known that a tilt box 
of a few square feet of floor will do more good than a yard 
of many square feet. The magical results of the little 
outdoor yards adopted by the most successful raisers of 
brooder chicks have been hastily attributed to the stimu- 
lating effects of the cold or to the influence of the fresh 
air or the direct rays of the sun. Wrong. ISTo possible 
allowance, proportion or variety, of heat, cold, fresh 
air, light or sun will save them without exercise. The 
curiosity and inquisitiveness of the little fellows led 
them to continually run indoors and out, like children, 
as children's mothers well know, and in this way a little 
exercise was gained by the use of the outdoor runs, but 
not enough by 99 per cent. You can afford pu|)ils plenty 
of exercise in a city schoolyard of very limited dimen- 



BUSINESS POULTRY FARMING. 259' 

sions, by means of gymnastic apparatus ; a caged squirrel 
allowed a wheel will thrive ; and brooder chicks or layers 
provided with a gymnasium will take even more exercise 
than if on a free range. « 

You can secure plenty of hatchable eggs in winter by 
providing the Exerciser for your laying stock and in this 
way get two or three months the start of breeders who 
are dependent on the advent of spring, gentle spring. 
You need not mind the cold much, granted that your 
layers are through molting, if you keep their blood stir- 
ring, and, as regards the kind of feed, you may give 
them almost anything that comes handy. Attend to 
their muscles, and then their gizzards, which are bun- 
dles of powerful muscles, will work all right. There is 
much wasted talk about a "balanced ration," and much 
wasted time spent in weighing the constituents of hay, 
grain and other feed stuffs, and beef, fat, milk, eggs, 
and other animal products, expecting to be able to put 
certain raw materials into one part of the mill and take 
out finished goods at another part, as the manufacturer 
does. But the processes of nature are so subtle that you 
cannot always tell by what you put in exactly what you 
will take out. There is no way so good as actually try- 
ing. The test of sowing and reaping will instruct a 
farmer concerning the adaptation of his land to a crop 
betterthan elaborate analyses of the crop and the soil 
could ever do ; and just so the only way to tell what a 
particular ration will do for fowls or other livestock is 
to try it. 

The state agricultural experiment station of New 
York, at Geneva, reported in Bulletin 132 an interesting 
experiment with a milch cow : 

" A cow fed during ninety-five days on a ration from which the fats 
had been nearly all extracted, continued to secrete milk similar to 
that produced when fed on the same kinds of hay and grain in their 
normal condition. 

" The yield of milk fat during the ninety-five days was 62.9 lbs. The 



260 AN" EGG FARM. 

food fat eaten during this time was 11.6 lbs., 5.7 lbs. only of which was 
digested, consequently at least 57.2 lbs. of the milk fat must have had 
some source other than fat in the food consumed. 

" The milk fat could not have come from previously stored body fat. 
This assertion is supported by three considerations: (a) The cow's 
body could have contained scarcely more than 60 lbs. of fat at the 
beginning of the experiment; (b) she gained 47 lbs. in body weight 
during this period of time with no increase of body nitrogen, and was 
judged to be a much fatter cow at the end;(c) the formation of this 
quantity of milk fat from the body fat would have caused a marked 
condition of emaciation, which, because of an increase in the body 
weight, would have required the improbable increase in the body of 
101 lbs. of water and intestinal contents." 

Commenting on the above the editor of the American 
Agriculturist well says : 

"To put in plain United States language that the average dairyman 
can understand, we state thus the case learnedly set forth by Dr. Jor- 
dan: This cow in three months gave in her milk 57 lbs. more fat than 
she consumed. Evidently the cow converted into fat part of the 
sugar, starch, fiber, protein, etc., that she consumed. That cows can 
really do this was not before known. This may explain why it is that 
rations deficient in fat or oil may produce milk rich in fat. The 
experiment also shows what wonderful and little understood pro- 
cesses go on in the animal system. Only a few weeks ago they 
removed a woman's stomach and she is now well and thriving, thus 
completely upsetting much of the 'physiology ' we have been taught 
for years. Assuredly, how little is really known about the animal 
economy ! Facts like these emphasize the marvel of life force." 

Yet there are very many persons who reason that the 
constituents of wheat resemble the white of an egg and 
therefore they must feed that grain to laying hens even 
if it costs twice as much as corn — being afraid that the 
latter contains too much oily matter, forgetting that the 
yolk has much fat, and serves as the first food of a chick, 
as the first food of a calf is rich in cream, and that an 
omnivorous animal can digest and assimilate what it 
requires from a variety of foods, among which corn 
stands pre-eminent for cheapness in this country. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

ARTIFICIAL INCUBATION'. 

The practice of this art reaches back to the dawn of 
history. The oldest written accounts are connected with 
Egypt. In "The Voiage and Travaile of Sir John Man- 
deville, Kt.," occurs the following, written in 1356 : 

"Also at Cayre (Cairo), that I spake of before, sellen men, comounly 
men and women of other lawe, as we clone here bestes in the market. 
And there is a common hows in that cytee that is all fulle of smale 
furneys; and thidre bryngen wonimen of the toun here eyren (eggs) of 
hennes, of gees, and of dokes, for to ben put in to the furneyses. And 
thei that kepen that hows covern hem with here of hors dong, and 
outen henne, goos or doke or any other foul; and at the ende of three 
weeks or a monethe, thei comen agen and taken here chickens and 
norissche hem and bryngen hem forthe, so that alle the countre is fulle 
of hem. And so men don there bothe wyntre and somer." 

The fact of the successful prosecution of this art in 
Egypt having become disseminated throughout Europe, 
there were incubators of various patterns constructed in 
France, England and other countries, from the middle 
of the fifteenth to the close of the eighteenth century. 
In 1777, a method of heating egg ovens by pipes of hot 
water was tried in France, according to that excellent 
work, "Incubation and its Natural Laws," by Charles 
A. Cyphers, the best which has appeared since the modern 
incubators came in use, outside of the standard works 
on embryology. To John Champion, Berwick-on- 
Tweed, England, 1770, probably belongs the credit of 
first hatching eggs by the aid of fire. He used a room 
through which passed two heated flues, the eggs being 
placed on a large round table in the center. He claimed 
that as many of the eggs hatched as if they had 

26 1 



262 



AN EGG FARM. 



been sat upon by a lien. He says : " The two flue, places 
do not open into the hatching room but into one adjoin- 
ing, where the keeper sits and the coal is kept. By this 
means the eggs are free from smoke and dust, by which 
they might otherwise be greatly injured. The two 
rooms have a door communication, that the keeper may 
every now and then visit the eggs, and see if they are in 
the proper degree of heat." 




FIG. 144. TILT BOX— PARALLEL SYSTEM. 



This experiment we shall refer to later as the type of 
what will eventually prove the most successful mode of 
artificial hatching on a large scale. The patent incuba- 
tors such as are now on sale, or modifications thereof, 
from the size of a cook stove to a billiard table, with reg- 
ulators attached, will always be of use for amateurs, 
families or ordinary raisers on a small scale, but the 
expense of the machines and the care involved in run- 
ning them are so great where thousands of chicks are 



ARTIFICIAL IJSCUBATIOST. 263 

wanted, that the adoption of an immense egg chamber 
holding many thousands of eggs and designed to be 
entered by the attendants, one of whom is always on 
duty night and day, a sitting room or waiting room 
being conveniently near, and personal supervision taking 
the place of or rather supplementing automatic regulat- 
ors, will ultimately prevail, because proving the most 
feasible and economical. 

From the year 1800 on, until about the middle of the 
century, there was a lull in experimentation till the late 
'60's and early '70's, when in consequence of the rage in 
this country for the introduced Asiatic and Mediterra- 
nean breeds of fowls and the general interest in poultry 
incited by the acquisition of these valuable races, there 
were some half a dozen hatching machines invented and 
put upon the market. Very crude affairs, though, they 
were, which long ago went down the stream of time, 
having however first served the useful purpose of offer- 
ing hints for later inventors. The rage for incubators 
culminated in the early '90's. The multitude of incuba- 
tor patents on file, the size of the manufactories where 
the principal machines are turned out, the extent of the 
advertising thereof, the elegance and costliness of the 
catalogs and the enormous sales effected, as well as the 
time and ingenuity involved in experiments connected 
with the improvement of the numerous styles of hatch- 
ers, to say nothing of the time and care bestowed upon 
them by the hopeful purchasers, can be realized only by 
those who have made a broad survey of the matter. The 
last ten years have been especially prolific in styles of 
incubators. 

Curiously enough, the skill spent in contriving the 
artificial brooders offered for sale has not kept pace with 
that given to incubators, although the fact that it is 
much easier to hatch chicks than to rear them has been 
evident all along. The notion which customers have 



2(U 



AN EGG FAE3I. 



often had that homemade brooders would answer all 
purposes operated to limit demand for the bought 
article and probably somewhat diverted the attention of 
inventors and manufacturers from perfecting brooders. 
Be that as it may, the art of artificial hatching has 




FIG. 145. WATCHING CHICKS AT EXERCISE. 



developed much beyond artificial rearing, and the Aveak- 
est point to-day in the artificial system appears in con- 
nection with brooders, as will be seen in later pages. 
Neither in hatching nor rearing must conditions be 
exactly thus and so to a hair's breadth. Considerable 



ARTIFICIAL INCUBATION. 265 

latitude is allowable, both in the natural and the artifi- 
cial processes. In fact, when wild birds of any species 
incubate and rear, there are fluctuations of weather and 
atmospheric conditions that would cause failure if it 
Avere necessary to maintain every requisite to an absolute 
nicety. On account of this latitude artificial hatching- 
is not extremely difficult, although no human art has 
ever made or ever will make as perfectly regulated and 
operated a hatcher as is the live natural one. 

Experts in the artificial process, esjDecially if they are 
incubator manufacturers or dealers, sometimes insist 
that the artificial method beats the hen, and are fond of 
citing the cases of unfaithful birds deserting or break- 
ing their eggs, etc. Granted that, although the habits 
of all wild species are uniformly exemplary in this 
regard, long domestication has impaired the incubating 
traits of some domestic breeds and utterly destroyed 
those of others, crossing with which from time to time 
has introduced uncertainties of results more or less into 
some flocks ; yet the point is this, given the very best 
incubator, run by the very best operator, in the very 
best cellar, with the very best eggs ; and compared with 
the. very best hen, set on the very best eggs, in the very 
best nest, located in the most suitable place, and the hen 
is decidedly the most perfect. No man can ever con- 
struct a fabric that will equal a feather, or a mechanism 
which will control heat, moisture and ventilation as 
wonderfully as the mother hen's body with its feathered 
coverino;. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

REQUISITES OF A GOOD INCUBATOR. 

To understand the points needed in an incubator, the 
changes which take place in the egg from the first to the 
twenty-first day of the hatching term should be studied. 
It is, however, not necessary to know all the details, 
which are of such wonderful complexity that to master 
them would need a lifetime. A farmer may fatten 
steers or raise wheat about as well (not quite) by atten- 
tion to a few prominent principles, as if he was versed 
in all the intricacies of animal and vegetable physiology, 
and a few general considerations of heat, moisture and 
ventilation will enable an operator to run an incubator 
almost as successfully (not quite) as if he had taken so 
thorough a course in comparative and ornithological 
embryology that he could describe all the successive 
marvelous changes in the egg from the first to the last 
stage of incubation. The close study of these stages is 
to be recommended, however, because of the intellectual 
gratification in tracing out such matchless processes of 
nature, while, if no direct practical benefit inures to the 
poultryman from such study, -indirect benefit he will be 
sure to receive on account of the increased admiration 
he will have for the wonderful masterpiece of nature, 
the egg, and the wonderful process of its incubation. - 

John Randolph said on the floor of congress that he 
would walk a mile to kick a sheep. There are too many 
poultry raisers who would walk two miles to kick a sit- 
ting hen, not appreciating the wondrous nature of her 
labors nor admiring her beautiful maternal instincts cel- 

26.6 



REQUISITES OF A GOOD INCUBATOR. 267 

ebrated in the Book, where we read : "As a hen gather- 
eth her chickens under her wings." The trouble has 
been, lo these many years, that very little ingenuity has 
been spent on contrivances for managing sitting hens, to 
minimize the trouble they cause their keepers, while 
inventive talent has compassed sea and land, earth and 
air in perfecting, so far as possible, substitutes for them. 
In constructing an incubator the sitting hen is always, 
and properly, appealed to as a standard, and from her we 
learn that, in addition to the purely mechanical requi- 
site of a changing position of the eggs, the three chief 
essentials of perfect hatching are heat, moisture, and a 
supply of pure air. The eggs must be right, however, 
in the first place, or the best incubator or mother hen in 
the world cannot turn out strong, healthy chicks. In 
the case of those hens which lay a great number of eggs, 
as was pointed out by the writer in the American Agri- 
culturist in 1870, those eggs laid near the close of the 
laying term contain germs deficient in vitality. Mr. 
J. L. Campbell, who is always worth listening to, says : 

" la a large flock of hens some of them are always right in the mid- 
dle of a litter, and their eggs being in with the others will account 
for the fact that some good, strong chicks can be hatched right 
along all the time, and it is very well that this is so, but I shall 
never kick again when my hens want to take a rest when I want 
to hatch the eggs. In fact, I shall encourage them to do so whenever 
the eggs begin to hatch poorly. Why, it looks very reasonable that 
when a hen has laid a long time right along, day after day, something 
must be getting scarce, because the supply has a limit. This is proved 
by the, fact that the hen finally has to stop. If ever I can get a flock of 
hens to average 250 eggs in a year I shall be happy, but I have a good 
bit to go yet to get there." 

The matter of well vitalized eggs at the start, when 
using the incubator, and the importance of well-hatched 
chicks at the outset when employing the brooder, all 
operators are agreed upon. But there are many other 
things concerning which there are interminable dis- 
putes, notwithstanding a quarter of a century of experi- 
ments. One book published by an expert who has 



268 AN EGG FARM. 

devoted twenty years to artificial incubation says : " Take 
the eggs out from the egg chamber to turn them, to 
afford a change of air;" while another expert who has 
studied the matter an equal length of time insists that 
turning should take place inside the machine and all 
exposure to cool air religiously avoided. One master of 
the art says the temperature of the egg chamber should 
be 102° and another prescribes 103°. One recommends 
providing moisture by keeping shallow pans of water 
near the eggs during the whole term previous to the 
18th day, while a third never supplies any moisture 
whatever, and a fourth would supply it or omit it accord-, 
ing to the results of tests made between the twelfth and 
nineteenth days. 

In regard to the method of turning eggs, there is a 
school of operators who insist that eggs must be gently 
rolled and that inverting the trays in which they are 
kept is unnatural and injurious, while another school 
advocates turning the trays as the quickest and easiest 
way, claiming that so long as the eggs are turned over it 
makes no difference how the revolution is accomplished. 
On the question of ventilation, one inventor exults in 
his method of a small, constant stream of air admitted 
near the bottom of his incubator and escaping at the 
top, and another, while providing apertures at the top, 
closes them with valves which open automatically, gov- 
erned by a regulator, to allow heated air to escape when 
the temperature rises beyond a certain degree ; and still 
another denounces all top apertures, claiming that in car- 
rying off hot air they also carry off moisture and dry the 
eggs too much, and he would ventilate only very slowly 
and through holes in the egg chamber floor. A legion 
of incubator makers claim that the regulators to their 
respective machines govern the heat perfectly, leaving 
nothing to be desired, while one solitary individual in 
the United States, who makes and sells an incubator 



REQUISITES OF A GOOD INCUBATOR. 2G9 

and who has written the best book on incubation extant, 
stands up boldly and says there is but one style of regu- 
lator that will do perfect work and that is not on his 
own machine or any other, because it is too expensive, 
since it costs more than all the rest of a machine. 

In regard to changes in the contents of the egg dur- 
ing incubation, one expert says none of the yolk is used 
to nourish the embryo till at or near the time when the 
former is drawn bodily into the latter during the latest 
stages of hatching, and another expert claims that while 
the white principally forms the chick, yet portions of 
the yolk enter from day to day into the white to replen- 
ish its diminishing substance and are afterwards used 
for the growth of the embryo. 

As concerns the care of the incubator in general, 
many dealers represent that it is so easily managed that 
"a child can run it" successfully; while others insist 
that no hatching machine will succeed without consider- 
able care and skill. 

When we pass from the topic of hatching to rearing, 
some insist that not over 20 or 30 chicks should be put 
in one brooder; while on the other hand dealers are 
plenty who, to induce an expenditure of $10 to 120 or 
upwards for one of their death traps, represent that it 
will accommodate 50 to 75 or 100 chicks, and in some 
cases the figures are 200 or more to a brood. One, after 
wrestling for several years with bringing up chickens by 
hand, insists that top heat only in brooding is the thing. 
Another, after an equally extended experience and bury- 
ing by the bushel chicks trampled to death, shuns top 
heat with the greatest persistence. Still another, after 
an experience of half an ordinary lifetime, uses top and 
bottom heat combined, while a fourth, grown gray in 
experiment in various localities from the Atlantic to 
the Pacific, says: "Side heat is as the hen, give me 
that and that alone." 



270 AN EGG FARM. 

If artificial hatching and rearing is so superior to the 
natural mode, as is persistently claimed by many advo- 
cates of the machines, including some who are not inter- 
ested in their manufacture or sale, why should there be 
such contradictions ? The fact that there are so many 
mutually destructive criticisms of methods proves that 
all is not plain sailing. The real truth is that the nat- 
ural machine is as much superior to the mechanical 
incubator and the brooder as the construction of the 
human body transcends that of a watch or a dynamo. 
All that should be claimed in imitating the hen by a 
machine is that we may approach but never reach the 
perfect regulation of her animal heat, and the ventila- 
tion afforded by those wonderful appendages, her feath- 
ers, with their matchless quality as non-conductors of 
heat, their almost impalpable weight and their innumer- 
able valves or shutters. Besides furnishing an egg 
chamber with top and sides composed, as we may say, 
entirely of delicate shutters, nature has an engineer on 
duty day and night to attend these shutters in an emer- 
gency, and give them a greater motion than common. 
The art of man could never succeed to all eternity in 
making one like all the millions of shutters, as we have 
called them, or ventilation doors, each held by springs 
vastly more delicate than the hair spring of a watch and 
a millionth of a grain in weight. 

Do not use a cheap incubator. A good one cannot 
possibly be constructed cheaply. Von Culin says : 

" The great demand for incubators and brooders has tempted sash 
manufacturers, makers of show cases and others, to get out various 
boxes, cases, tanks and barrels, with various attachments, and call 
them incubators or hatchers. Some buy a lot of almost expired 
patents, and boom the new machine on the reputation of the old one, 
to which the patents originally applied, while the new machine pos- 
sesses none of the good points of the old one, which to build woidd 
cost considerably more than the new one is sold for. Many of this 
class never had any merit, and went out of the market, but new ones 
bob up along the line, have their day of deceit and disappear. Watch 
for them." 



EEQUISITES OF A GOOD INCUBATOR. 271 

If there is any instance where saving at the spigot and 
wasting at the bunghole will apply it is in bestowing 
valuable time, eggs and oil (and losing the season) on 
an incubator that gives you only worthless chicks or 
none at all, the latter much preferable. 

There are two principal modes of heating. One is to 
warm air by a lamp, and the other is to warm a tank of 
water over the top of the air chamber, by a lamp, and 
warm the air by this tank. There is no moisture 
imparted to the air, of course, by the latter mode any 
more than by the former, since the tank must be per- 
fectly water-tight, but the advocates of this method 
urge that the body of water is a protection against fluc- 
tuations of temperature. On the other hand the hot- 
air school say that by their system you can cool or warm 
quickly when you want to, which they claim is an 
advantage. It is certain that there are good incubators 
of both sorts, though fierce battles of words have been 
waged between the respective rival manufacturers of 
each. One objection to a tank is that if of cheap mate- 
rials it rusts out in a few years and sooner or later 
encourages profanity by exasperating leaks, while if well 
made of durable materials the cost is an obstacle. 

The time has passed away when any one or two or 
four or six makers can claim to offer the only good 
machines, any more than the production of excellent 
pianos, plows, cornshellers or mowers is confined to a 
small number of manufacturers. Mr. Campbell says in 
the Poultry Keeper : 

" My experiments have never been confined to the use of my own 
incubators. I have tried all the machines which were popular in their 
day but are never heard of now, and I have tried all the most popular 
ones of the present, and to sum up the whole matter all that I have 
learned by so doing is to find out that there is more in the operator 
than in the incubator, and very much more in the eggs than either." 

It may be asked how the would-be purchaser is to 
decide if the interested whoopings-up of the dealer are 



272 an egg farm. 

to be disregarded. The reply is, visit some party, not 
an agent, who has ran a machine successfully, and if 
more than one season so much the better. Be sure to 
find out the exact per cent hatched, and whether the 
younglings stand up and face the music or are simply 
"born to die." Learn the principles on which it oper- 
ates as regards the three essentials, heat, air, moisture. 
If possible interview more than one operator using the 
same machine. If you cannot do this, examine the cat- 
alogues and cuts of the leading manufacturers and 
notice w r hich gives a clear description of the modus oper- 
andi of their incubators. Pay no attention to their 
boasts but steer by what commends itself to your judg- 
ment in the machines themselves. On the matter of 
agents'' representations the following is from that careful 
experimenter and able writer, Mr. W. H. Eudd : 

"If beginners have a preference for any particular incubator we 
advise them if possible to see one of them in operation, or to corre- 
spond with some one who uses it, but if the person thus addressed is 
an agent for it or has a commission in. view, we should in our own case, 
as the world now wiggles, take mighty little stock in his recommenda- 
tion, or in any of his statements concerning it." 

A few words may not be amiss in this connection 
regarding a test of the merits of an incubator by a pub- 
lic exhibition of hatching. The dealer or his represen- 
tative appears in the neighborhood about twenty days 
before the show opens and starts one or two machines, at 
nearby convenient headquarters, loaded with the very 
best eggs procurable, tests them repeatedly up to. the 
time the gaping crowd gather to see chicks come out, 
culls and selects from his machines on the side and car- 
ries the pipped eggs (each one of which has the kick of a 
mule in it, all the fair to medium ones though hatcha- 
ble being rejected) to the show room, where a highly 
ornamented and gilded incubator stands, fired up ready 
to receive them, and make a hatch of 101 per cent, one 
egg being double yolked. The machine run by the sly- 



REQUISITES OF A GOOD INCUBATOR. 2?3 

est exhibitor of course stands highest in the estimation 
of the uninitiated. The catalogues of the manufactur- 
ers, each claiming their wares as the best, are suggestive 
of the emigrant who wrote to a friend on the auld sod : 
" America is a glorious country. There every man is as 

good as every other man and a sight better." A 

common error for an amateur or small scale operator is 
getting an incubator of too large a size. On this point 
that most trustworthy expert, Mr. C. Von Culm says : 

"Many beginners are undecided as to what sized incubator to get. 
If we wan ted a capacity of 300 eggs, we would get three incubators of 100 
eggs capacity each ; if 600 capacity, three of 200 eggs each ; if 750, three 
of 250 each ; if 1200 capacity, three of 400 each ; if 1800 capacity, three of 
600 eggs each. This is much better than getting one large incubator 
for all the eggs. It costs more for the several smaller machines than 
for one large one for all the eggs, but the advantages are: You can 
have fresher eggs for each incubator, you can sort the eggs if you have 
large quantities, and select those with shells of same kind and thick- 
ness for each incubator; you can place duck, turkey or goose eggs in 
separate machines, or use a different machine for each variety of 
hens' eggs. You can keep a record of each kind and quality ; you will 
learn more about the amount of moisture for each class of eggs, and 
will soon become able to hatch all kinds of eggs equally well. If you 
make a mistake you will discover it more easily and. can rectify it 
more readily; the result of a mistake or an accident will not be as 
expensive, and you will have a belter chance to retrieve any loss 
which you may sustain through accident, carelessness or neglect of 
rules in hatching, for it would hardly be likely to affect but one 
machine, and as that one would contain only one-third of your full 
quota of eggs, you would have the other two-thirds left, even if all in 
one machine were ruined, and you would not be apt to repeat the 
performance (or non-performance) with either of the other two 
incubators." 

With the above we agree as regards bought incuba- 
tors, but, as we shall explain farther on, the incubator 
of the future for the large scale man will not be shipped 
to the customer at all ; but will be so large that it will 
have to be constructed on his premises, and the same 
remark applies to the brooder of the future for the large 
poultry plant 

Finally, having purchased your incubator, study the 
printed directions of the manufacturer very carefully. 
Do not be in a hurry. Take time to learn. Says Mr. J. 
18 



274 AN EGG FARM. 

A. Hunt, whose success in artificial hatching we have 
never known excelled : 

" When you receive your machine and get it set up and in running 
order, take a whole day if necessary to study it in its various parts. 
The regulating apparatus should receive particular attention ; do not 
be satisfied in knowing that it does the work, but find out how it 
works, familiarize yourself with every part, as it may be very useful 
knowledge to you in future operations, for should your regulator 
through any accident or without accident fail to work, you will be bet- 
ter able to discover the difficulty and remedy it without delay." 

As regards the style of lamp, use none that is not as 
secure against accident as the best that can be bought for 
money, because buildings, incubators, eggs, chicks and 
all have in a number of instances burned, through defec- 
tive lamps. See if insurance experts, who make a study 
of such things, approve the style of lamp. Use the best 
oil, 160° test, for to tolerate anything poorer in an affair 
of this kind is bad economy, and keep the lamps nicely 
trimmed. 

The regulators furnished incubators are of various 
patterns and materials. A bar thermostat composed of 
metal and hard rubber makes on the whole the best reg- 
ulator, but it never can be as reliable as the heat of the 
hen. Cyphers says : 

" In running an incubator, the leading feature, and the hardest to 
secure, is an even temperature. This would not be the case had we a 
good regulator, but we have not. Not only have many hundreds of dol- 
lars been spent in experimenting, trying to get a good heat regulator 
for an incubator, but many thousands of dollars have gone in like 
manner to secure a heat regulator for other purposes that would be 
controlled by dry heat, and which would keep the temperature con- 
stant to a degree under all reasonable conditions. It is absolutely 
impossible to make such a regulator that will be delicate enough to 
hold the heat to a degree, powerful enough to do the necessary work, 
and simple and inexpensive at the same time. This has been and still 
is the aim of experimenters, but it must only meet with failure in the 
future, as it has in the past. Whatever means is employed to regulate 
the temperature of the hatching chamber, it is absolutely essential 
that it should be kept within narrow limits. The heat and atmos- 
pheric conditions must balance one another, and, if they do not, incu- 
bation cannot be carried to a successful exclusion. My meaning is 
simply this: Evaporation from the egg must be held at such a point 



REQUISITES OF A GOOD INCUBATOR. 275- 

that the fluids in the embryonic structures are ample to keep the mem- 
branes moist up to the time of exclusion, and the rate of evaporation 
is not the same under any two degrees of temperature." 

THE MOTHER HEN THE PATTERN. 

What are the natural processes ? The hen's nest is 
concave to keep the eggs close together, and shallow 
enough to prevent them from lying two deep, thus 
bringing the upper part of each egg containing the germ 
in close contact with her body or the feathers next her 
skin. Other feathers, especially those of her wings, are 
distended so as to form a wall, enclosing the egg on all 
sides and retaining the heat, the construction of the 
feathers being such that while all strong currents of air 
are prevented, yet the slightest movement of the hen 
causes the elastic down to operate like fans and drive 
out air from the nest, to be replaced by fresh air from 
outside. Indeed, there is a slight, exceedingly gentle 
circulation of air going on, strained through the laby- 
rinth of the overlapping feathers, even when the 
hen is asleep. Also, through the natural law of diffu- 
sion, the poisonous gas thrown off from the embryo 
through the porous egg shell is forced out of the nest 
through the feathers independent of any circulation of 
air. It does not stay to become accumulated under the 
hen to the injury of the incipient chick ; for the law 
above hinted at compels it to diffuse itself in all direc- 
tions, and it will overcome gravity and rise, though 
heavier than the air with which it mingles, and will force 
itself through feathers as it cannot do through the 
walls of an incubator. 

As the eggs at the middle of the nest become very 
warm to the touch of the hen she pushes them away by 
hooking her beak and the upper portion of her neck 
over those at the outside and pulling them along to take 
the place of the former. The operators in the Egyptian 



276 AIT EGG FARM. 

hatching ovens use no thermometers but learn to distin- 
guish different temperatures.. b} r the sense of feeling, and 
attendants on incubators and brooders sometimes learn 
to attain very great precision in judging tempera- 
ture without a thermometer. The hen can do it with- 
out a thermometer and without learning how. We wink 
without learning how, because our ancestors did, and the 
hen knows when eggs are warm enough to take their 
turns in the outer ring, because her ancestors were liv- 
ing thermometers. The movements of the hen to roll 
her eggs give an increase of ventilation, and in very 
warm, damp weather when she is not rolling eggs she 
will occasionally bristle her feathers and open her wings 
a little to give her nest a slight airing, and if very hot 
and very damp will even stand upright a few seconds 
by spells. Then, if it grows still hotter, she will leave 
the nest entirely, sometimes remaining off for hours at 
a time. If, on the contrary, it is windy, she will stick 
closer than a brother, even when in need of food and 
water. In very cold weather she is especially faithful to 
her charge ; for she not only refrains from standing up 
when rolling her eggs, but she does this while keeping 
her body unusually cpiiiet and holding her feathers close. 
If the weather continues very cold she will remain on 
her nest three days or more without food. The ten- 
dency is for the eggs to assume positions in the nest 
with the small ends toward the center, although with all 
gallinaceous species of birds which sit on a dozen or fif- 
teen or more eggs this order is not observed perfectly, as 
it is in the case of such other species as lay only from 
three to six. All eggs hatch best when the large end is 
the highest. 

Nature being our instructor, we cannot excel her and 
may consider ourselves fortunate if we come somewhere 
near her. The most that can be claimed for artificial 
hatching and rearing is, that while it can never operate 



REQUISITES OF A GOOD INCUBATOR. 277 

so perfectly as the hen, its exemplar, yet it can when 
properly directed approach so near her work as to keep 
within the bounds of the fluctuations a well-vitalized egg 
or a well-hatched chick can undergo without serious 
injury. The fact that departures from the perfection of 
nature so wide as to be barely compatible with success, if 
not wholly fatal to it, are liable to occur, renders it 
advisable that the natural method should be adopted in 
general, and the artificial resorted to only under special 
circumstances, as, for example, at such times and places 
as do not afford sitting hens. The writer would not 
publish, regarding a good incubator, a parallel to the 
famous "volume" on the snakes in Ireland containing 
only six words : "There are no snakes in Ireland," or 
repeat to a party about to buy an incubator the advice 
of the redoubtable Mr. Punch to folks contemplating 
matrimony: " Don't ;" for both incubators and brood- 
ers have their uses and on occasions are indispensable. 

TEMPERATURE. 

The correct degree of heat for the egg chamber of the 
incubator is found by taking the outside temperature of 
the sitting hen at the point of her contact with her eggs, 
near which, during what has betn termed the sitting fever, 
a network of blood vessels becomes specially distended, 
capable of furnishing plentiful heat to be received by 
the eggs and nest. The internal temperature of the hen 
some distance from her skin is given by Charles A. 
Cyphers, whose close study and clear description of the 
process of incubation merit unstinted praise, as 109° to 
110° at the beginning of her sitting term, decreasing 
slightly towards its close, to offset partially the develop- 
ment of heat within the eggs themselves consequent on 
the' growth, blood circulation and breathing of the 
chicks. 



278 AN EGG FARM. 

The warmth imparted to the eggs it is difficult to 
ascertain with absolute precision, as eggs in different 
parts of the nest vary, and different parts of the same 
egg vary also. Cyphers found it 102°, others place it 
at from 103° to 105°. The writer could never find a 
temperature higher than 102 1-2°. At the start, it 
takes about forty-eight hours to heat the nest and eggs 
through and through sufficiently to raise the latter to 
their full temperature of say 102° or 102 1-2° or 103°. 
The air just above the eggs in an incubator must register 
about 103° in order that the eggs may reach 102°. The 
bulb of the thermometer should touch a fertile egg, as an 
infertile one is not a reliable indicator, and the glass 
should be set in wood, not in metal. The germ being 
always. at the top of the egg, in close proximity to the 
hen's body, undoubtedly reaches 103°, even when the 
average temperature of the egg is a degree or half a 
degree less. Either 102° or 103° may be aimed at in the 
regulation of the incubator and if secured with a fair 
degree of precision all will go well so far as the requisite 
of heat is concerned. Before putting in the eggs, your 
incubator should be regulated and heated to the correct 
degree several days in order to be thoroughly warmed 
through. Then after putting in the eggs let the regu- 
lator severely alone during the first week. The eggs 
will cool off the machine at first, and then it and they 
will gradually warm up, and thus the natural process 
will be imitated in which, as we have seen, the eggs are 
not brought to the full standard heat suddenly. It has 
been recommended by some poultry men to run the tem- 
perature at 98° the first day and increase gradually for 
four days. But two considerations appear here : One 
being that although the eggs, shells excepted, are such a 
very poor conductor of heat that it takes two or three 
days for the hen to warm them and the nest through 
and through ; yet the important part of the germ, being 



REQUISITES OF A GOOD INCUBATOR. 279 

uppermost and almost in contact with the hen, being 
separated from her only by the shell, which is a remark- 
ably good heat conductor, gets to about 100° the first 
day ; and the other consideration being that some hun- 
dreds of cold eggs suddenly put into a well warmed up 
air chamber, regulated to the correct temperature of 102° 
on a level with the eggs and 103° at the bulb of the 
thermometer, will lower the temperature of the air for 
awhile, so that, as our experiments, corroborated by those 
of others, have shown, no particular care need be taken 
to run lower at the start than later. 

The eggs, or rather the embryo chicks, develop so much 
heat, beginning at about the eleventh day and then pro- 
gressively till hatching is finished, that no more than one- 
half as much oil is consumed by the incubator lamp dur- 
ing the last half of the term as during the first. Hence 
the necessity of watching your thermometer and turning 
down the flame as an offset to the animal heat. When 
this heat is great the prospect is good for a good hatch, 
both as regards numbers and vigor. 

When the chicks begin to pip, 104° is a good temper- 
ature, and when they begin to leave the shells it may be 
105° without harm, but rather positive good, for the 
chicks being at first quite wet, evaporation makes them 
colder than the air of the egg chamber. Avoid at this 
stage the common error of opening the egg chamber door 
unless necessary. The effect of a blast of cool air on the 
wet bodies of delicate chicks is as if you should step out 
of doors in winter directly from a warm bath. The door 
may be opened perhaps twice in twenty-four hours, for a 
very brief time, to remove some of the empty shells 
which might otherwise cap over partly pipped eggs, hope- 
lessly imprisoning the inmates, and also the older active, 
well-dried chicks should be removed and basketed or 
put under a warm brooder hover, lest they caper around 
over the limp, prostrate, wet ones. 



280 AN. EGG FARM. 

Some operators advise a heat of 106° for the last stages 
of hatching and claim it is of no consequence if the 
chicks pant. But, although an adult fowl may go 
around panting on a summer day when the mercury 
stands at 106° or higher, and be apparently none the 
worse afterwards, the writer is quite sure that the same 
temperature injures delicate chicks, especially as they do 
not get as good a chance at a little fresh air as if in the 
nest, where every motion they make operates the venti- 
lating fans of down. Man in his clumsy attempts to 
ventilate mechanically sometimes has a shaft run through 
a room to revolve fans for his comfort, but he could 
never attach millions of exceedingly minute fans to his 
incubator walls to be moved by the occupants. Thus do 
perfect cosmic provisions mock man's puny efforts. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

CARE OF THE EGGS. 

As we have seen, the hen changes the position of the 
eggs, thus varying the heat they receive, but under no 
circumstances can she ever make them too hot; unlike 
the artificial incubator which may be capable of reach- 
ing 105, 110 or 120°, thus killing the germs out and out, 
or, what is worse, causing imperfect chicks to be thrown 
on the unavailing care of their owner. Chicks may be 
hatched after a fashion and not be well hatched. The 
decree of nature is that the eggs may, from time to 
time, be held at a point several degrees below the nor- 
mal maximum without material injury, thus allowing 
the sitting hen to forage for a living, but a decided 
departure above that normal is detrimental or positively 
fatal. 

The effect of too much or too protracted cooling is to 
add to the whole term of hatching. The hen may be 
shut out of her nest for twenty-four hours in moderately 
cool weather and the eggs and nest become so chilled 
that no heat whatever can be detected by the sense of 
feeling, yet eleven eggs out of twelve may hatch — at the 
end of the twenty-second day, however, instead of the 
middle of the twenty-first, as the vvriter has repeatedly 
demonstrated. If the weather is decidedly summery, 
thirty-six hours of desertion may not be sufficient to 
extinguish life, a fact the ignorance of which has often 
led people to unnecessarily destroy partially hatched 
eggs. On the other hand the thorough heating through 
and through of eggs to 108°, a situation which, as before 

281 



282 AX EGG FARM. 

noticed, is impossible in natural incubation, will ruin 
them. Stories are told of the beat in the incubator 
reaching 110 or 112° for a brief period without percepti- 
ble injury, but the air might reach that degree, and 
some portions of some of the eggs reach it nearly or 
quite ; yet some of the germs in some of the eggs might 
be heated not more than 106° or thereabouts, not quite 
reaching the point of clanger, since it ordinarily takes 
hours to equalize heat thoroughly between the air and 
the eggs. 

It must not, however, be understood from what 
has been said that chilling, resulting in delayed hatch- 
ing, carries no injury whatever to the chicks, for they 
are never quite perfect when brought out either ahead of 
or behind time. The eggs will endure greater variations 
of temperature in the air around them after the twelfth 
day than before. When eggs have been overheated they 
may be sprinkled with moderately cool water so that 
evaporation may check the heat without delay. If 
through any accident the temperature has been for 
hours a degree or two below 102° or 103°, the machine 
should be run an equal length of time as much above, so 
that the chicks may appear when clue. 

SHOULD EGGS BE COOLED? 

The question of cooling the eggs for a short time daily, 
merits attention. Eef erring to our teacher, we find that 
the hen leaves her nest for two principal things, of 
which it is hard to tell which is the more important. 
She must have food and drink, and she must run, and if 
of an active, wingykind, like the Games, she must jump 
and fly also, that blood circulation and a good head of 
vitality may be kept up, and the bowels may not fail of 
regular action. Food and exercise are what she leaves 
her nest for, and not to cool the eggs. Whatever cool- 



CAKE OP THE EGGS. 283 

ing they get is unimportant, or else a slight but neces- 
sary evil, as is evidenced by the care she takes to stick to 
her nest for days at a time in cold weather or indulge in 
very brief absences, while she treats herself to liberal 
vacations of several hours' duration when the mercury is 
in the nineties. 

We have tried thorough coolings, moderate airings, 
and none at all, repeatedly, and with results always in 
favor of the latter, when every other condition was nor- 
mal. We are aware that experiments of others have 
sometimes shown up in favor of cooling, but we are satis- 
fied that in such cases it will be found, on close investi- 
gation, that the eggs had first been subjected to too 
much heat, or too much moisture, or both. 

To cool several hundred eggs to a temperature of 80° 
or 85° or thereabouts, reduces the temperature of the 
egg chamber for quite a time when they are returned to 
it, as the thermometer and regulator will show you. But 
the warmth of the hen, Avhose blood has been quickened 
by her outing, till a fine glow has been established, very 
quickly brings back the heat of the important top parts, 
where the germs are, of the small number of eggs she 
has in charge, and the nest itself retains heat enough 
during her absence to keep the less important under 
parts warm. If the eggs are removed from the incuba- 
tor to be turned, the machine should be closed at once, 
especially if the incubator room is cold, for the egg 
chamber would otherwise part with its warm air very fast 
during the turning of the eggs and the shifting of them 
from one part of the tray to another part. The opera- 
tion of testing eggs should be performed in a room of 
the temperature of at least 70°, and 75° or 80° is better 
if the operator can stand it. 

The eggs, first, last and all the time, should receive as 
little cooling as possible ; for, although the passage of 
fresh air through the pores of the shell is indispensable, 



284 liT EGO EAEM. 

fluctuations of the temperature of the egg are not neces- 
sary to secure it, as was. formerly supposed. The benefi- 
cent oxygen of the air and the injurious carbonic acid 
gas, or carbon dioxide as the shorter and preferable term 
is, exhaled from the embryo as it grows, will exchange 
places through the shell and mix, urged by a force or 
tendency inherent in their nature. Chemistry teaches 
that this force needs no assistance from the alternate 
expansion and contraction of the contents of the egg 
consequent on heating followed by cooling, though 
poultry men once universally believed this assistance 
necessary. 

TURNING THE EGGS. 

While. cooling the eggs is to be avoided, turning them 
is absolutely indispensable, as abundant experiments 
have shown. The hen does not turn them systematic- 
ally at all. Her efforts are limited to shifting them 
from the outer edge of the nest to the center, and in 
accomplishing this purpose she necessarily turns them 
more or less. They may turn halfway over, or three- 
quarters, or perform one or more complete revolutions, 
and possibly, though not probably, land in the same 
position as before starting. There is no "this side up 
with care," but they take their chances, and, as the hen 
rolls some of them, if not all, several times in twenty- 
four hours, by the laws of chance they are prevented 
from always landing on the same side even if they some- 
times do. 

In addition to the rolling performed with her beak, 
she moves nearly all the eggs a little while settling down 
on returning from a foraging expedition, on which occa- 
sion she makes a careful though quite vigorous shuffling 
to give room for her feet and shanks. The hen, unless 
very tame, does not ordinarily meddle with her eggs 
when you are watching her, but when alone repeats her 



CAKE OF THE EGGS. 285 

fussing oftener than is commonly understood. Hence 
the practice, which is correct, of turning incubator eggs 
twice a day, this being none too often. 

The structure of the egg, so well known nowadays 
as to hardly need repetition, is such that the minute 
germ spot which is the seat of life and around which 
the chick forms, rises always at the top of the egg 
whichever side up the latter may be placed, like a cork 
in a tight barrel of water when the barrel is rolled over. 
In nature, when the new-laid eggs are not gathered, but 
left in the nest, they are always turned a little, when the 
number has reached four or five, by the layer when mak- 
ing room for her feet as above described, and sometimes, 
but not always, she rolls the eggs with her beak like a 
sitter. The maternal instincts are so jumbled in some 
cases by the taint of the blood of a non-sitting breed 
introduced at some time, perhaps a long while ago, into 
strains cf sitters, that adherence to the ancient heredi- 
tary proprieties is not always precise. As all gallina- 
ceous birds prefer to make their nests in a shady and 
rather moist and cool place and afford their treasures 
some change of position, the artificial storage of eggs 
for hatching should be in a moderately cool and not over 
damp cellar, and they should also be turned at least once 
a clay. 

Eival manufacturers dispute over methods of turning 
eggs by the incubator operator. One says that they 
should be gently rolled, and not suddenly flopped by 
inverting the tray. But the vigorous shuffle of the 
hen's feet above remarked, and the fact that eggs often 
hatch well after having been carried a dozen miles by 
wagon over extremely rough and rocky roads, or two 
thousand miles by rail, shows that there need be little 
solicitude concerning the results of revolving an egg 
tray, especially as nobody goes at it hammer and tongs, 
owing to the fragile nature of its contents. 



286 AN EGG FABM. 

One celebrated machine, invented by a very eminent 
expert, has a clock attached which turns the eggs every 
twelve hours whether the attendant is in the room, or in 
the same county, or not. There are other machines 
contrived so that the attendant himself may work an 
apparatus to turn the eggs without taking them out of 
the egg chamber. There is considerable work involved 
in turning and otherwise thoroughly caring for a large 
number of eggs in an incubator, trimming the lamps, 
etc. — decidedly more work than is needed in caring for 
an equal number of eggs under hens and managing the 
sitting birds, provided the natural method is followed 
under a first-class system. Hence it is natural enough 
for incubator attendants to welcome labor-saving, egg- 
turning devices. 

But whatever method of turning is followed there are 
certain steps which must never be omitted. The trays 
must be turned end for end, and if there are two trays 
these must change places every time the eggs are turned, 
while if there are four trays, each should, in the course 
of two days' routine, occupy each of the four corners of 
the egg chamber. Furthermore, and here is an impor- 
tant matter too often neglected, the eggs at the center 
of each tray must, at least once a day, and twice is bet- 
ter, be made to change places with those at or near its 
eds'es. There is a knack in doing this to reduce the 
bother to - the minimum. First seize as many outer eggs 
as can be grasped in both hands, and place them on top 
of those at the center of the tray, then gently crowd the 
top layer down, rolling them from side to side mean- 
while, to make them settle down and displace the others. 
This will roll every egg in the tray and fill the vacant 
places at the edges. Thus, the changing from the 
warmer to the cooler positions and the turning are 
accomplished at the same time, the trays being, of 
course, without partitions. 



CAEE OF THE EGGS. 287 

This systematic changing of trays and of the eggs 
within the trays is absolutely necessary to secure the 
best results both as regards the vigor of the chicks and 
the per cent hatched. For, be it remembered, there is a 
liability, and a very great liability as incubators go, of 
decided differences in the temperature of the various 
sides of the egg chamber compared with each other, 
greater differences when they are compared with the 
center, and still greater differences when the center is 
compared with the corners, these last being the coolest 
part of the machine. To hold the heat steady at the place 
the bulb of the thermometer occupies, is a different thing 
from holding it the same at all parts of the egg chamber. 
The cracks at the door, if there has been shrinkage, 
which is likely, considering the severe ordeal an in- 
incubator door has to undergo, and the necessary open- 
ings for ventilation, tend to make the air vary at differ- 
ent trays and different parts of the same tray. But if 
the maximum variation is no greater than between the 
center of a sitting hen's nest under normal conditions ; 
if the operator shifts the eggs as faithfully as the hen 
does ; if the average temperature for twenty-one days 
is the same in both cases, and if the eggs at the center of 
machine, or at the warmest point, wherever that is, 
never get too hot, then the incubator is all right so far 
as heat is concerned. It may be run thus accurately, but 
the chances are against it, and besides, in getting the 
heat right, which is only one of the requisites, the mat- 
ter of moisture is liable to be made all wrong, as will 
appear when we treat the question of evaporation fur- 
ther on. 

MOISTURE. 

An egg is composed largely of water, the white alone 
being 78 per cent of water, and the whole egg originally 
about 74 per cent, a considerable part of which evapo- 



288 AN" EGG FARM. 

rates during the hatching process when carried on by 
the hen. The shell is porous, permitting the escape of 
moisture. Although the normal situation for the nest, 
which is on the ground, is liable to be more or less 
damp, yet a spell of dry weather might dry up the eggs 
somewhat before sitting begins, and in some cases a nest 
of the common species of fowl, or of a grouse, quail, tur- 
key or any other of the hen's gallinaceous congeners, is 
liable to be located on a sandy hillock among dry leaves, 
where very little moisture will reach it in the possible 
absence of rain and clew. In any case, the time after an 
egg is laid before the hatching of the same begins is, in 
a state of nature, only from a day or two to a fortnight 
or so, and the shell being but moderately pervious to 
moisture, no great diminution of water in its composi- 
tion occurs. 

After incubation begins, the heat of the hen's body 
not only dries the nest and the ground for a little dis- 
tance under and around it, but by raising the eggs to the 
comparatively high temperature of about 102°, would in 
a little while render their contents too dry, except for a 
beautiful provision of nature consisting in the glazing 
of the shells. A few days after the hen begins to sit 
upon her eggs a secretion from her feathers or skin par- 
tially closes the minute pores of the shell. Incubator 
operators have tried to imitate this glazing by using oil 
from the oil gland at the rump of a fowl, and other sub- 
stances, but have never succeeded. Some of the secrets 
of Mother Nature are very subtle and elusive. Take a 
dozen eggs and place them under a sitting hen and 
another dozen from the same lot and put them in an 
incubator. After the twelve under the hen have become 
well glazed, place them in a pail of water with the oth- 
ers from the incubator. The result will be that the last 
named will absorb water through the shell, and sink, 
while the glazed eggs still float. But while nature has 



CARE OF THE EGGS. 289 

provided means of checking evaporation from the eggs 
by means of this glazing during the early stages of incu- 
bation, yet considerable drying out of the water in the 
egg is useful at the later stages, and accordingly the 
shell gradually dissolves away from the inside, the lime 
in its composition being used to form the bones of the 
embryo. Water must now escape cpiite fast or the chick* 
will have no room to grow or breathe. 

Often the incubator operator after testing the eggs 
and removing all but the promising ones and finding 
everything going well, apparently, up to the eighteenth 
day, finds finally a disheartening per cent dead in the 
shell. In such cases the embryos are almost fully devel- 
oped and very large and moist, packing the shell tightly, 
they having been waterlogged, swelled and literally 
drowned. They appear so large and strong that the 
operator is puzzled to know what has happened to kill 
such promising, healthy looking chicks. Of course the 
true cause of such a state of things was that the water 
j3ans in the incubator contained too much evaporating 
surface. 

Those people who claim that it is as easy as falling off 
a log to run a good, properly constructed incubator and 
that "a child can do it," should read the following 
statement of Mr. Eudd : " It is practically impossible to 
delegate the care of incubators to hired help. ***** 
Although employing from five to eight men on the farm, 
some of our own family always take entire charge of the 
machines." And in regard to moisture, which is only 
one of several things which must be right, Yon Oulin 
says : 

" Some one will say, ' what a lot of fuss about moisture ! Let me give 
you the whole thing in a nutshell. Find out just what degree of 
humidity is needed in the egg chamber for each week or day, make 
slide covers for your moisture pans, place a moisture gauge in the egg 
chamber and hang up your moisture schedule beside the machine. 
When you want more moisture slide open the covers, and when you 
want less, close them. Isn't that simple ?' 

19 



290 AN EGG FARM. 

" Yes, clear friend, wiser heads than yours or ours thought of that 
years ago, but it would not work then, and it will not work now. 

"Why? For various reasons; among them: The Great Ruler of the 
Universe will not permit us to slide the covers of His moisture pans ; 
and while, we are obliged to circulate fresh air in the egg chambers of 
our machines, we are obliged to have it more or less humid or dry, just 
as it comes from the breath of nature. The hygrometer is useful to 
experiment with, provided it is a good one, but few of those which are 
sold to poultry men are reliable. Still someone says, 'Well, I know 
- that the humidity of the atmosphere varies some, but I still believe I 
can work it with the moisture gauge and the sliding covers on mois- 
ture pans.' 

" Very well,, we will ask you for one demonstration, and if you make 
that satisfactory, we will ask for one or two more — but one will prob- 
ably be all you want at a time. 

"Let us suppose that you conclude that you want thirty degrees of 
moisture in the egg chamber the first week, thirty-five the second and 
part of the third, with ninety degrees from the pipping of the first 
egg? All right. We will take for granted that your gauge is correct. 
AVell, here we are at the beginning of the first week. You have not 
yet put any water in your pans but your moisture gauge indicates 
sixty-five degrees of humidity, and your thermometer one hundred 
and three degrees of temperature. What is the matter; why don't 
you reduce the humidity? You place another moisture gauge in the 
room where you operate your incubator, and you find that the humid- 
ity there is ninety degrees. You hang a gauge in the open air out of 
doors and it registers ninety-five degrees. You only want thirty 
degrees in the egg chamber; how are you going to reduce it to thirty?" 

Allowing the incubator to ajjproach a too high tem- 
perature and then reducing it by having valves opened 
by an automatic regulator, lowers the heat effectually, it 
is true, but at the same time carries off moisture at a 
great rate and the embryo is in danger of becoming too 
dry, a condition as fatal as the opposite one. Eelying 
on ventilation to govern the temperature is dangerous. 
The regulator should check the heat when there is risk 
of too much, not by letting out warm air, which has 
received and holds moisture imparted by the eggs, and 
letting in cold air to suck still more moisture from 
them (for air in becoming warmed becomes thirsty ; 
that is, its capacity for taking water is increased and it 
will dry out the eggs fast), but by lessening the flame 
of the lamp. The flame may be lowered by having the 
regulator work an apparatus to check the draft of the 



CARE OF THE EGGS. 291 

lamp by dropping a thin, very light, circular metallic 
plate over the to}} of the chimney, or by turning down 
the wick or shortening it by a sliding tube, the method by 
lessening the draft being preferable because needing 
less power and therefore being more delicate and certain 
in its working. Now here we approach a difficulty. No 
matter how perfectly the heat regulator works there 
must still be some change of air or it will become 
impure, because the eggs exhale a poisonous gas, carbon 
dioxide or carbonic acid gas, when the embryos are 
growing, too much of which gas in the egg chamber 
would seriously impair or utterly ruin them. 

Now, as the temperature of the air Avill vary outside 
the incubator, and the moisture it contains differs widely 
in different parts of the country, and at different times 
and seasons in the same section, it is evident that no 
hard and fast rules can be set for supplying moisture. 
Each operator should obey the instructions given by the 
manufacturer for the use of his machine, remembering 
that the admission of air to the eggs in cold weather or 
very dry weather will evaporate moisture from them 
faster than when the air is warm or damp outside. For 
it must always be kept in mind that warming a volume 
of air increases its thirst, as we may say ; that is, it 
increases its affinity for moisture and makes it drink 
from the most available source of supply — from moisture 
pans or wet sponges if they are present, or if not, from 
the eggs. The only way to success is to use your rea- 
son. If you change the air but little and slowly, as the 
hen does, and ir there is summer weather or mild spring 
weather, or if the locality itself is a moist one, as on a 
damp seacoast for example, or if the location is moist, a 
damp cellar for instance, you will need to have but little 
water in your incubator, or none at all. and everything 
will be all right so far as moisture is concerned. On 
the other hand if the weather is cold, or rather if the 



292 AN EGG FARM. 

room in which your machine is kept is cold, and you 
are in the arid or semi-arid region between the one hun- 
dredth meridian and the Sierras, you will need to sup- 
ply more moisture than the directions accompanying 
your machine call for. Nothing in the world will 
answer except careful trials, changing the amount of 
water, — or rather the area of your shallow moisture pans, 
since the evaporation depends on the extent of surface 
exposed and not on the quantity of water, — according to 
results and surrounding conditions. 

The care and skill, patience and judgment necessary 
to run an incubator are so great that those individuals 
possessing these qualities cannot afford to run one, as a 
general thing. They are wanted in other employments. 
Suppose you try what seems to be a reasonable quantity 
of moisture for your locality and for the number of 
rainy and foggy days that you have reason to expect at 
the season of the year, and you get a good hatch. It 
will not do for you to say : " Now I have found the cor- 
rect notch and will stick to it." You can safely stick to 
it so long as the weather remains as before, but if the 
atmospheric conditions change, you must be governed 
by circumstances. Yet it is said, "a child" can run 
the machine. The fact is, the incubator dealers know 
that if the prospective customers were told that all is 
not plain sailing they would in many cases lose sales. 

The hen, as we have seen, sticks to her job in cold 
weather, and it should be observed that in windy weather 
especially, when uncovered eggs would dry out the fast- 
est, she broods her nest with unusual care and will 
endure hunger and thirst for days at a time rather than 
leave them for an instant. Who has not observed that 
there are times when if the sitting hen is removed from 
her charge she will immediately return in spite of a 
bribe of unusually tempting food offered her ? Even the 
most timid hen will at such times fight you to get back 



CAKE OF THE EGGS. 293 

to her nest. At the same time the eggs are not smoth- 
ered by this devotion, for the texture of her feathers is 
such that during high winds a little air will surely strain 
through them no matter how closely she broods, while 
the poisonous emanations will escape, and, unlike the 
incubator, she cannot possibly become hot enough under 
any circumstances to ruin the eggs, any more than the 
temperature of a human being in health can rise above a 
certain point. Her vital fires are absolutely limited as 
regards excessive heat, When the air is damp, warm and 
still, she leaves the nest at slight inducements and remains 
away quite a time, unless there are signs of an approach- 
ing storm, in which case she hurries to lay in a supply of 
food in the shortest time possible, and hastens back. 
Lest the reader think we are attributing too much to 
her powers of discernment, it may be remarked that not 
the sitting fowl alone, but animals generally possess a 
keen sense of impending storms. The swine will carry 
straw to their bed at such times, and all wild animals, 
whether birds or quadrupeds, are very active in hunting 
for food, which they devour with unusual greed, as if 
impressed with the. urgency for laying up for a rainy 
day. Yet for this monitor, sensitive to coming atmos- 
pheric changes which man with all his intellect cannot 
discern, this engineer always on duty, this living ther- 
mometer, barometer, and aerometer, a wooden box is 
substituted and "a child can run it!" 

As regards the superiority of the natural covering to 
the eggs, afforded by the hen's feathers, compared with 
the incubator walls, Cyphers, unlike numerous other 
writers who have a machine to sell, frankly acknowledges 
the inferiority of such walls, and points out with empha- 
sis that the down and feathers control physical forces 
which exert an important influence over the embryonic 
development. He says : 

" Other conditions being equal, the degree of humidity ordinarily 
existing in the atmospheric air is sufficient for successful incubation, 



294 AN" EGG FARM. 

providing that the tension of the moisture in the two atmospheres 
remains the same, and that the rate of movement of the air surround- 
ing the eggs exercises a more powerful influence on evaporation than 
the usual variations of humidity. In the construction of our hatching 
chamber, therefore, there are four features of vital importance to be 
considered, viz., a non-conducting wall that will protect the eggs 
from outward changes of temperature; a provision for maintaining 
the atmospheric air within the chamber in a pure state; the mainte- 
nance cf as great a tension of aqueous vapor in the inner as in the 
outer atmosphere for their respective temperatures, and the control 
of the movement of the air around the eggs. 

" In natural incubation the purity of the air surrounding the eggs is 
maintained by exchanges with the outer atmosphere through the 
wall or septum that intervenes. This wall is composed of down and 
feathers, which allow of a spontaneous diffusion of gases or vapors 
through them, while they are sufficiently dense to hold any current 
in check by frictional resistance. It is therefore obvious that the nat- 
ural provision for maintaining the purity of the air around the eggs 
also provides, through the same medium, for the retention of warmth, 
for an equilibrium between the relative humidity of the two atmos- 
pheres, and for the control of the movement of the inner air. And as 
it is the nature of the fabric of which the wall is constructed that con- 
trols the physical forces of incubation, that is, the storage of warmth, 
and the purity, humidity and movement of the air surrounding the 
eggs, it is evident that we have not appreciated, or even understood, 
its function." 

VENTILATION. 

This subject is, as we have said, intimately connected 
with the supply of moisture. Indeed the three factors, 
heat, moisture and pure air, are all closely related and 
act and react on each other, rendering perfect artificial 
incubation much more difficult than it would otherwise 
be ; for in ventilating we may remove too much damp- 
ness as well as heat, and in warming newly introduced 
air we change its capacity for moisture, and make it 
"drink like a fish." To hatch eggs in a good incubator 
is rather easy, though demanding some ability ; to 
hatch them well so that they will be real good ones is 
moderately difficult, and to rear them in good shape, 
artificially, is decidedly difficult. 

Nobody ever succeeded in hatching eggs the shells of 
which had been made air-tight by a coat of varnish, or 
eggs placed in a hermetically sealed chamber, showing 



CAKE OF THE EGGS. 295 

that ventilation is an absolute necessity. But if air is 
admitted to the egg chamber in currents, excessive evap- 
oration is liable to result, and this is not all ; for there is 
danger that some portions of the chamber will be cooled 
faster than the others. It is hard to warm an apart- 
ment, large or small, uniformly in every part at the 
same level, even when the air is at rest, and still harder 
when there are gusts and eddies of cold air. 

The plant and animal both need oxygen. The latter 
while taking it in gives out carbon dioxide, a noxious 
gas, the excessive accumulation of which in the air 
around the animal would cause its death, though it is life 
to the plant. This gas is heavier than air, hence it was 
once believed that it would settle to the bottom of a room, 
as water seeks the bottom when it is placed in the same 
vessel with oil ; but this notion was exploded when the 
law of the miscibility of gases was discovered. Through 
this law, gravity is overcome by a stronger force, which 
compels two gases to mix, and if one is much heavier 
than the other, this mixing power is all the stronger. 
Aside from any currents of air whatever in the air 
chamber, the carbon dioxide exhaled from the eggs 
becomes diffused through all the air in the chamber. 
Then if no more of this gas should be produced, the 
air and gas in the apartment would be in what is called 
an equilibrium. Now suppose the air in the incubator 
should contain a greater proportion of the poison than 
the air outside does, and suppose it w r ere possible to heat 
and maintain the air outside, in the incubator cellar, on 
a level with the machine, at absolutely the same degree 
as on the inside of the latter, and a small door should be 
opened between the air chamber and the cellar ; there 
would, of course, be such a perfect balance of tempera- 
ture within and without the egg chamber that there 
would be no draft through this door. But now, although 
the heat is in equilibrium between the inside and out- 



296 AN" EGG FARM. 

side of incubator, the gas is not, and portions of the poi- 
son will at once begin to move from the inside to the 
outside and their places will be taken by constituents of 
the air which will move from the outside to the inside, 
even in the absence of any draft whatever such as differ- 
ence in temperature creates, and this process will go on 
until the air inside holds exactly the same per cent of 
poison as the air in the cellar. We are supposing, of 
course, that no more of the poison was formed within 
the eggs and exhaled meanwhile. 

The above illustration shows what is meant by the 
miscibility of gases. If the carbon dioxide keeps com- 
ing from the embryo, as it will, then nature will keep 
removing it, independent of air circulation created by 
heat, if. there are exits. The poison from the eggs under 
the hen is bound to escape through the millions of inter- 
stices in the downy portions of her feathers, no matter 
if these enfold her nest so closely in cold weather that 
the frictional resistance keeps the air from passing 
through. This wonderful law of diffusion sets inertia, 
gravity and friction at defiance, being more potent than 
they. 

Manufacturers of the best modern incubators take a 
leaf out of nature's book, and, avoiding upward ventila- 
tion, make the egg chamber perfectly air-tight at top and 
sides. The purchaser should correct shrinkage of mate- 
rial at door and doorway, if any occur after the heat has 
had time to take effect, so that the door shall shut 
closely. The manufacturer also bores a set o± small 
holes through the bottom of the egg chamber, these 
being furnished with buttons which may be turned over 
them as desired. These holes permit the escape of the 
poisonous carbon dioxide. This escape will be slow, but 
constant, and the excessive drying out of the eggs, 
which a current of air would cause, is avoided. For an 
incubator of this sort, perfectly air-tight at top and sides, 



CAKE OP THE EGGS. 297 

with half-inch holes bored in the bottom, Cyphers gives 
the following as the number of holes required for each 
hundred eggs to keep the air of the egg chamber reason- 
ably pure : 

" For the first ten days of incubation, under an outer atmospheric 
temperature of from 50 to 70°, three holes ; under an atmospheric tem- 
perature of from 30 to 50°, two holes. From the tenth day to exclu- 
sion, under an atmospheric temperature of from 55 to 70°, six holes ; 
under an atmospheric temperature of from 40 to 55°, five holes; 
and under an atmospheric temperature below 40°, four holes. The y 
number of holes given above is for a chamber which is opened morn- 
ing and night. There is no way of shifting the position of the eggs or 
trays without opening the chamber, and unless their position is 
changed so as to equalize the heat received, it is impossible to suc- 
cessfully incubate a large number of eggs in one apartment." 



CHAPTER XXX. 



THE INCUBATOR EOOM. 



The best place for incubators is in a room part 
of which is underground. It may be excavated in 
the side of a bank so as to have earth outside the 
walls on three of its sides, and may also be covered with 
earth on top of a waterproof roof. On level ground, a 
good way is to excavate two or three feet, so that the 
floor of your cellar may be reached by steps outside, the 
walls being of stone or hard-baked brick laid in cement 
mortar, and banked up with earth to the eaves, where 
there should be good eave troughs. The roof may be of 
any usual pitch and shingled, and instead of being cov- 
ered with earth the building inside may be. kept free 
from the effects of the sun in summer and from cold in 
winter by making a tight, level floor over the main room 
from plate to plate so that there will be a V-shaped attic 
apartment, which should be first made rat-proof and 
mouse-proof, and then packed closely from top to bot- 
tom with hay or straw. This style the writer has found 
preferable to an earth-covered roof, because the cost is 
considerable if you make the latter water-tight, as it 
must be, and strong enough to support the weight of 
earth with an added burden of rain or snow. 

The ideal incubator cellar should never be warmer 
than 60°, nor cooler than 40°. In a room above ground 
with a liability of the weather temperature crowding 
100°, and chicks or ducklings nearly ready to break the 
shell, the animal heat will sometimes run the tempera- 
ture up to 108° or 110°, even with the lights out, neces- 

298 



THE INCUBATOR ROOM. 299 

sitating sin-inkling the eggs every few hours to prevent 
their ruin. Too much ventilation of your cellar should 
not be allowed, for with every admission of air, changes 
of temperature are liable to occur. Have just enough to 
keep the air reasonably pure. The floor should be pref- 
erably of carefully smoothed cement, permitting an occa- 
sional scrubbing. It is best to have windows enough so 
that the thermometers may be read easily and the win- 
dows should be doubled, or at all events cased and fitted 
very carefully, to guard against both ingress and egress 
of air. For egg testing, it will be found an excellent 
plan to have a side door leading to a small room, which 
may be warmed to the temperature previously directed. 

THE INCUBATOR OF THE FUTURE. 

The teasel, with its elastic natural hooks, cannot be 
equaled for cloth manufacturers' use in combing fine 
fibers of wool, by any artificial hooks or springs of the 
most delicate mechanism the art of man has yet pro- 
duced in trials lasting through centuries, and as this is 
a triumph of merely a humble plant, so the feathers of 
the sitting bird of the animal kingdom, higher up in the 
scale of life, can never be equaled by human ingenuity. 
Incubators of ordinary size, holding a few hundred or a 
thousand eggs, but too small for the attendant himself to 
enter, have been made better and better for thirty years, 
till the best of these are hardly susceptible of further 
improvement, unless, indeed, a way is found to make the 
walls of the egg chamber of feathers or of some other 
material permeable to carbolic acid gas, yet resisting air 
currents, and so good- a non-conductor as to retain heat 
well. There comes a time when an ordinary material 
product of man's skill reaches its culminating point. 
Plows, for instance, have been improved from the initial 
crooked root or snag of wood through numerous stages 



300 A1ST EGG FARM. 

to the polished steel implement of to-day, every promis- 
ing curve of mould board having been tried meanwhile, 
until it is probable that the plows of a hundred years 
hence will not be a whit better than those we have, 
although it is likely that our descendants will propel 
theirs in ways we cannot even guess. 

The incubator of the future will hold 15,000 or 30,000 
eggs, or more, and will be large enough for the opera- 
tors to go into. Perhaps the room will be quite high, 
and the floor supporting the egg racks will be arranged 
elevator style, so that it may be raised or lowered almost 
instantly to secure the desired temperature, a graduated 
scale on the wall showing how much the altitude must 
be changed to change the heat to a degree or a fraction 
of a degree. By relays of attendants, the heat, air and 
moisture will be governed personally r every hour and 
every minute, instead of being left to blind machine reg- 
ulation. Nothing but constant human supervision will 
ever conquer the difficulties that mark the gulf between 
the best incubators and the mother bird — for she is on 
duty all the time. We are told that John Champion in 
1770 used a room he could enter. He was the first 
white " champion " of the large room plan, though this 
had been exploited by people of another complexion for 
hundreds and probably thousands of years previously. 
The wheel will come full circle and the artificial incuba- 
tion of the twentieth century will revert to the primitive 
large apartment. 

Let us see how the large room for eggs and the wait- 
ing room for the attendants, who keep constant watch 
of all the conditions, can be combined with the electric 
signal already in use by incubator operators to transmit 
news of temperature from their machine to their office 
or sleeping room, and with revolving fans such as have 
already been adopted in the construction of at least one 
mammoth incubator, and with a spraying machine to 



THE INCUBATOR ROOM. 301 

govern moisture, which is a part of the same machine. 
Surely an attendant, clad to suit, or suited without a 
suit, can stay a short time in the egg room without par- 
ticular discomfort. There are quite a considerable num- 
ber of crafts which compel workmen to encounter a 
decidedly higher temperature, and cannot a man, if he 
can explore the region where the eggs are, and have 
enough of them in the works to pay for constant super- 
vision, change the air by gentle currents with nicely 
adjusted fans moved by cunning machinery completely 
under his control? The incubating room can be located 
in the center of a still larger room, the latter being held 
at an almost absolutely even temperature. The walls 
of the outer room can be built in such a way as to shut 
out all influence of outside winds, dampness and dry- 
ness, heat and cold. 

The large incubator room alluded to is at " Aratoma 
Farm," Stamford, Ct. The writer has never seen it nor 
communicated with its inventor or proprietor, nor with 
anybody connected with it, but has read a newspaper 
account of it. Everything points to the success of the 
idea. The big stores and factories run out the small 
ones, as the big fish eat up the little ones, and the box 
incubators will be devoured by the apartment incubator. 
Brooding hens, when properly managed, beat the small 
incubators, and by small we designate all that are custo- 
marily shipped by rail or wagon ; but the mammoth 
incubator built where used will beat both. The highest 
talent can be afforded to run it, the highest degree of 
certainty in operation can be secured by it, at the mini- 
mum of cost for supplying heat, moisture and ventila- 
tion, because of the great number of eggs it will hold. 

We have seen how the comparatively miserable, small, 
puttering incubator, in its attempts at letting out foul 
air, carried off dampness also and introduced cool air, 
which in becoming warmed robbed the eggs of their 



302 AN" EGG FARM. 

normal moisture. Now the problem of warming dwell- 
ings and accomplishing ventilation at the same time has 
been solved satisfactorily by introducing a current of 
air into the room which is to be warmed. An exit reg- 
ister must first be opened at or near the bottom of this 
room to let some cool air out so that the warm air will 
have room to get in. This warm air is procured at first 
while cold from the pure air outdoors through a large 
pipe, and made to come in contact with a coil of pipes 
heated by hot water or steam, after which it ascends, by 
the lightness the heat gives it, to the room where it is 
wanted. Similar apparatus can be used in the mam- 
moth incubator. The hot air and cool air also, led in 
through a separate pipe, can be forced anywhere by 
means of fan wheels run at high speed, and nicely 
adjusted registers can shut it off at will. The spraying 
machine can be brought to bear on the air that is being 
warmed, and as much humidity can be supplied as 
desired, and no more, at the pleasure of the operator, 
who may be guided by the air reservoir at the end of a 
fertile egg, as is done at Stamford, or employ a more 
artificial moisture gauge, such as is used by scientists. 

It is not apparent that gentle currents of fresh air of 
just the right temperature can injure the eggs, provided 
it is just moist enough. Also if these currents are cre- 
ated but seldom, the amount of ventilation will prove 
sufficient, owing to the great bulk of the air enclosed in 
so large a room. The means at the command of the 
operators will enable them to change the air as often as 
called for by experience. The heat and humidity 
in a box, a parlor, or a big cathedral even, can be con- 
trolled to a nicety by the aid of modern appliances, if 
a man has nothing else to do but tend them, and in no 
other way. 

If electricity, or animal magnetism, or some indispen- 
sable subtle or occult influence were bestowed upon the 



THE INCUBATOR ROOM. 303 

eggs by the body or feathers of the sitting hen that 
could not be furnished by art, it might be impossible to 
construct the incubator of the future satisfactorily. 
But so far as is now known, not including the purely 
mechanical affair of change of position, the only requi- 
sites for hatching are heat, moisture and ventilation. 



CHAPTEE XXXI. 

BBOODERS. 

Artificial brooding and rearing include three requi- 
sites — warmth, ventilation and exercise. In incubation 
there is exercise ; for the chick or embryo uses its limbs, 
or their rudiments, from the sixth day on, including the 
vigorous kicks which complete the hatching. But as 
this exercise takes care of itself, it is not included in the 
list of incubation requisites, although moisture is. Cor- 
respondingly, some moisture is needed in the air the 
chicks breathe, but this matter takes care of itself and 
is not included in the requisites, though exercise is. 
Heat and ventilation are two requisites common to both 
incubation and brooding. 

If artificial hatching, as carried on in the ordinary 
commercial incubators, meets difficulty in regulating 
moisture, artificial brooding meets with a still greater 
difficulty in governing heat. If no regulator is used, the 
chicks are almost sure to suffer, at one time or another, 
from too much or too little heat, while if a regulator is 
used, adjusted to some particular degree of heat, as it 
must be, of course, if it is to be used at all, why every 
time the birds run under or out of the hover, they 
change the temperature, in spite of the regulator. 

We will try to explain this matter fully because it is 
so seldom understood. The fact is, volumes have been 
written on incubators, compared with single pages on 
brooders. One book has one hundred and seven pages 
on the incubator and one-half a page on the brooder. 
Notwithstanding, common consent has been given by 

304 



BROODERS. 305 

experienced, practical operators to the proposition that 
it is much easier to hatch healthy chicks in an incubator 
than to keep them health}- afterwards in a brooder. As 
regards the beginner, often he has earnestly studied the 
construction and use of the hatcher, while taking it for 
granted that it was perfectly easy to run the brooder. 
Later he sends a communication for the question box 
of his poultry paper, asking why his chicks died off. 
If chicks become either seriously chilled or decid- 
edly overheated at night, it always means injury and 
often means death in spite of all the benefit good 
food, pure air and exercise can -give, though these will 
enable them to withstand more calamity in the shape of 
improper temperature than they otherwise could. Yet, 
notwithstanding the importance of proper heat, in the 
majority of cases the manufacturers have not provided 
a regulator for the brooder, and their customers have 
not insisted on having one. Every brooder regula- 
tor is limited in the exercise of its functions by 
the chicks interfering with its operation, but it is 
better than none at all, and two are better yet, as will 
be shown. 

The matter will be the better understood by reference 
to the working of an incubator, the regulator of which 
is set, say, for 102 1-2°. After the first chill consequent 
on putting in the eggs has been overcome, the tempera- 
ture runs passably even till the day when it begins to 
rise and finally gets too high, though the regulator 
has slowed the flame clown to the minimum. Why ? 
Because the incipient chicks are giving off animal heat. 
What does the operator do ? He turns down the flame 
still more. Now supposing he has a good hatch, and 
wdien the chicks get dry, and old enough, he removes 
three-fourths of the number without changing the lamp 
at all, what will happen ? The heat will go down rap- 
idly, and the remaining chicks will be chilled half to 
20 



306 AN EGG FAEM. 

death. Now suppose, instead of one or. two of this sort 
of fluctuations in ten days there were half a dozen of 
them or so in twenty-four hours. Suppose twenty or 
thirty chicks are suddenly put into the egg chamber and 
after awhile as suddenly withdrawn, and this process 
should be repeated over and over again. What can your 
regulator do now ? It certainly cannot prevent extremes 
of heat and cold from being reached. The operator 
would have to attend to turning the wick up or down, 
over and over again. 

Now apply this reasoning to the brooder. The regu- 
lator is set, we will say, for 98° and reaches and holds 
that temperature all right while the hover is empty, 
waiting for chicks. It is at dusk, and a half dozen 
come in. As soon as they settle down without exercise, 
their blood of course slackens in its speed and 98° does 
not feel warm enough, nature having regulated the hen's 
nest at 103°. Therefore, they huddle together if there 
is top and bottom heat, or stretch upward to try to 
reach the source of warmth if there is top heat only ; and 
a current of cool air coming in near the floor under the 
curtain, they strive to get up in the world by trampling 
on their fellows, as people do, while if there is side heat 
they crowd toward the hot water tank or hot air drum. 
They are not very cold, but are just cool enough to be 
uncomfortable and they will keep in continual motion, 
scolding meanwhile, saying: "Keep still, won't you, 
and let a fellow go to sleep." As outsiders come in, one 
after another, lifting the curtain and letting in gusts of 
cold air, the temperature falls, we will say, to 95°, caus- 
ing the regulator to turn on the heat full blast, and by 
the time the whole brood gets massed together, squeezing 
weak chicks in the center to death, 98° is again reached 
at the point where the thermostat is, for the curtain has 
ceased to admit cold air. Now the regulator shuts off a 
part cf the heat, yet the chicks are still too cool and 



BROODERS. 307 

therefore they keep in motion when they should have 
all been buried in slumber an hour ago. 

In a little while the animal heat raises the tempera- 
ture to 103° at the center and the chicks there drop off 
to sleep, crooning a contented lullaby in spite of some 
crowding going on by their fellows at the outside of the 
group, where it is 99° or so. The heat still rises because 
there are twenty-five, perhaps seventy-five, little fur- 
naces under the hover, each 108° inside. By the time 
the air at the outer row of birds reaches 103°, and they 
squat down with the contented exclamation before 
referred to, it is probably 106° at the center, and rising, 
and the chicks there are soon awakened from their too 
short nap by close, hot, foul air, reeking with dampness 
from the dead bodies of a couple of their mates lying as 
flat as if an elephant had trod on them. These two 
were crushed in the preliminary struggle. Then begins 
the strife of those in the center to get out. ■ The outer 
row grumble : "Keep still, won't you, and let a fellow 
sleep," and then they begin to crowd with all their 
might against those in the center. Now follows a battle 
by all hands, during which some of the combatants open 
the curtain flaps, either by running against them in the 
fight or by running out for a breath of fresh air, and. so 
the center of the room is partially ventilated, as the air 
has been stirred up by the rumpus and cooled somewhat, 
and the sleepy inmates, having added one or two more 
to the list of dead, settle down again, the temperature 
having been by this time lowered sufficiently to be 
endurable, no thanks to the regulator, however. 

But, alas, there is no rest for the weary. The same 
thing goes on over and over all night, the period between 
the maximum and minimum heat being perhaps of an 
hour's duration. The birds become exhausted for lack 
of sleep. The strongest do not get into the list of killed 
or wounded, but all, whether at the head or the foot as 



308 AN EGG FARM. 

regards comparative strength, will look as if the} 7 had 
been drawn through a woodpile backwards, after a feAv 
nights of such dissipation, and they will be very sleepy 
in the daytime. Their keeper, if a novice, will begin 
now to change their feed, but if somebody punched him 
with a sharp stick or dragged him out of bed by his 
heels every time he got fairly to sleep every night last 
week, his constitution would demand something besides 
a change from beef and potatoes to mutton and parsnips. 
But somebody may advise to set the brooder regulator 
not at 98°, but enough lower than that to make allow- 
ance for the rise after the chicks are in. If the animal 
heat raises the temperature 12°, set your regulator at 90° 
and after awhile it will rise to 102°, the chicks will be 
comfortable then and sleep till morning, he says. This 
adjustment avoids some of the dangers inseparable from 
the 98° plan, but involves new ones. The chicks have a 
longer period of undisturbed rest after they once get to 
sleep under the 90° plan, but have to undergo a longer 
contest with the cold at the start. To fight for warmth 
while the heat is slowly rising 12° results in more severe 
and protracted chilling than when it is rising only four 
degrees. Also, there is another trouble. The animal 
heat is sufficient to run the hover up to 102° at a little 
after sundown when the evening is comparatively warm, 
but as morning approaches, the air outdoors lowers 30° 
and that inside the brooder house 15°, or if the early 
evening was still and the wind rises toward morning, 
the heat inside may fall 20°. ISTow the struggles at the 
start for the warmest place resulted in a sort of sifting 
process, > — the weaklings got pushed to the outside, — and 
as morning approach] es, those least fitted to withstand cold 
are exposed to it the most. As a mass, they are too 
cold now, if they were just right at the early part 
of the night, and if just right now, they were over- 
heated then. 



BROODERS. 309 

We have never succeeded as Avell at an adjustment at 
either 98° or 90°, as at 94°, a mean between the two, 
which mitigates some of the disadvantages of each, . 
though all troubles cannot be escaped, no matter how 
you set your regulator. The nearest approach to jDerfec- 
tion in automatic regulation of a brooder consists in 
having the air of the brooder house itself heated artifi- 
cially and its temperature governed automatically to 
guard against the effect of fluctuations of the outside 
temperature during the night, and have a regulator 
attached to each brooder also, put at 98° as in the first 
instance, or 99° or 100° even, thus escaping the chill- 
ing when the birds go to bed. Also have another regu- 
lator attached to every brooder set at 104°, this one not 
being connected with the lamp at all, but with a thin, light 
lid over a circular opening one and one-half or two 
inches in diameter in the top of the brooder. Have 
numerous small holes in the curtain. Then, with a not 
too numerous brood there will be very little crowding, 
and as the temperature can never get below the notch 
of the lamp regulator, and never very much above the 
notch of the other regulator, there will be no disastrous 
chilling, at any rate. 

The ill effects of a too cool hover when chicks are in 
the down are much greater, be it remembered, than of 
an overheated hover. For when the brood consists of a 
safe number of birds, the chicks can spread out to cool 
themselves, nature having taught them to do this, as 
may be ascertained by their avoiding close contact with 
the hen's body of a sultry summer night, and squatting 
close to the outer rim of her feathers, with their heads 
entirely outside. 

This three-regulator plan, two for each brooder and 
one for the brooder house, approaches the perfection of 
natural brooding, but does not reach it, as will be shown 
further on in the description of the Brooder of the 



310 AN EGG FARM. 

Future. Objections on the score of expense are, of 
course, very apparent. There must be a furnace, a 
boiler and pipe system for the brooder house itself, 
either steam pipes or hot-water pipes, in" addition to 
lamps for the brooders, and the house must be quite 
well built and reasonably free from crevices around the 
doors and windows, to meet the case of unusual cold, 
and winds especially, and the furnace fire carefully 
tended so that the regulator can change the furnace 
dampers to good effect. If the season of the year and 
the latitude permit the use of an equivalent number of 
brooding hens, the management of which, with their 
broods, is properly provided for, mind, their employment 
will be vastly less expensive than such a good, complete 
brooder system as is above described, with triple regu- 
lators. 

In place of this plan of thorough automatic brooder 
regulation, personal supervision may be employed, but 
this must be done by a relay of help and kept up day 
and night in order to come in competition with the nat- 
ural process of brooding. This would be so expensive, 
with a plant of small brooders and small broods, as to 
be afforded only when pursued on a large scale and 
helped out by very high prices for the product. The 
operator must pass up and down the lines of brooders, 
and, — guided by thermometers, or, better, by the sense 
of feeling which, after a little practice, becomes marvel- 
ously accurate in determining temperatures in many 
cases, and by the behavior of the chicks, for they will 
tell him unmistakably whether they are too hot or too 
cold or just right, — turn down a flame here and raise 
one there, eternal vigilance being the price of chickens. 
Expense again — less mechanism than in the triple reg- 
ulator system, but more labor in attendance. Worst of 
all, while securing the right degree of heat, the ventila- 
tion of the hovers is bound to be lacking whenever the 



BROODERS. 311 

heat is insufficient. One important thing must not -be 
neglected, — the flame of the lamp must be fed by air 
conducted through a cold-air box communicating with 
outdoors, and the smoke and waste air from the lamp 
must be allowed to escape through a flue leading 
through the roof. 



CHAPTEE XXXII. 

METHODS OF HEATING AND VENTILATING BROODERS. 

When the rage for brooders began in the United 
States, brooders were all built to have heat distributed 
over the backs of the chicks, in alleged imitation of the 
hen. They are said to be "under "the hen at night. 
Now it is natural for chickens to feel the feathers of 
their mother upon their back, and when the ground is 
cool and damp, for instance after cold rains, and they 
feel chilly before becoming thoroughly warmed after 
going to bed, they will be found standing up at full 
height to get all the heat they can upon their backs, and 
will also crowd closely together and towards their mother 
to get warm. The empty artificial brooder, as com- 
monly used, without even one regulator, to say nothing 
of two, the operator cannot venture to heat to 103°, the 
temperature at the outside of the hen's body ; for the 
vital heat of the brood would soon make it so hot that 
they could not stay in it at all. He therefore aims gener- 
ally at about 90° or 92° for cpiite young chicks. On first 
entering the hover, they elevate their backs as much as 
possible and stretch their legs to full length, even stand- 
ing on tiptoe some of the time, especially if there are 
loose folds of soft cloth overhead to imitate the hen's 
feathers, or a tank or pipes of hot water, the radiant 
heat from which they plainly perceive is above them. 
Not content with stretching to the utmost towards the 
grateful warmth, the biggest, strongest fellows try to 
climb upon the backs of their companions to reach the 
heat, and some of the weaker ones are trampled to death, 
as described in previous pages, and their bodies form 

313 



HEATING AND VENTILATING BROODERS. 313 

platforms to stand on, the possession of which is fought 
for ; fratricides fighting for the dead bodies of their 
brethren. 

At this stage in the progress of brooder building the 
idea appeared of locating the source of heat supply some- 
where else. The writer remembers being invited many 
years ago to the country seat of the then president of 
the New York State Poultry association, which was at 
the time holding an annual exhibition. On arriving at 
his place, after seeing his extensive poultry plant, the 
ruins of his brooder house, once the largest in America, 
destroyed by fire but a few weeks previously, were shown 
us and the proprietor said, pointing to a spot in the 
ashes: '-'There stood the first bottom-heat brooder ever 
built in America." Very soon after that, bottom heat 
was all the rage, and the parties adopting it said they 
found decidedly fewer chicks trampled to death and 
pressed as flat as a flounder, and also stealthy visits made 
by the owner in the silent watches of the night demon- 
strated that the former struggle, "upwards, upwards, 
still upwards," was not going on. 

But the path was not yet strewn with roses. No reg- 
ulator was attached to a brooder in those days, that we 
ever heard of, and if the bottom-heat brooder were too 
cool, the chicks would crowd, even if they did not tram- 
ple, and if it were too warm, their legs and the under 
parts of their bodies were the first to become overheated. 
It is evident that in the natural order of things, the 
ground on which the chicks rest never is and never can 
be more than moderately warm, even when the hen has 
hovered over it all night, and is frequently decidedly 
cold, and sometimes frozen as solid as a rock, when she 
begins to brood. Weakness of the legs, general debility, ■ 
a tendency to go to sleep in the daytime because resting 
so poorly at night, and various other symptoms gave 
warning that something was wrong". 



314 AX EGG FARM. 

Next followed the invention of side heat, one of the 
ablest advocates of which is the eminent expert, Mr. C. 
Von Culin, whose argument we will let him state in his 
own words : 

"A brooder is supposed to take the place of a good hen. To do 
this successfully it must be made as nearly like a hen as possible. 
Now bow is a lien built? Where does the heat come from? Where 
do the chicks hover? How do they get to and from the heat, and 
receive fresh air ? Look at the illustration of a brooding hen, and see 
for yourself. Is not the heat which tne chicks get from her princi- 
pally side heat? By chance a chick may get caught under the breast- 
bone or under the foot of a hen, but not often. The wings, feathers 
ard down of the hen retain the greater part of the heat from the 
body. The brooding chicks can put their heads out for fresh air, 
instead of being crammed into a bunch and surrounded by from fifty 
to a hundred other chicks. If They are too warm they can get out, if 
notpinned down under the breastbone or foot of the hen. The heat 
from the hen certainly cannot be termed ' bottom heat,' nor yet ' top 
heat.' It is — ap she squats down and her body is surrounded by the 
chicks— principally ' side heat,' with some lop heat retained by her 
feathers." ■ 

At about the same time that side heat was thought of, 
a combination of top and bottom heat was tried and its 
advocates became extremely numerous, its superiority 
to either top or bottom heat alone being very evident. 
In the combination plan a small part of the heat is dis- 
tributed under the brooder floor to check the reaching 
u]3ward, which, as we have seen, is so disastrous, but 
the most of the heat enters near the top of the hover 
and radiating downwards meets the heat which rises 
from the moderately warm floor, so that the brood cham- 
ber is warmed throughout. The choice lies between the 
combination and the side heat plans. One great advan- 
tage of the latter is that the chicks are in a thin line 
instead of in a bunch, preventing crowding, and they 
can always withdraw from the drum or tank by taking a 
couple of steps, nature having taught them to do this, 
just as they hug the body of their mother closely or 
withdraw from her, as regard for their comfort dictates 
under the varying conditions of wind and weather. 



HEATING AISTD VENTILATING BROODERS. '315 

It is worth noticing- that, owing to the fact that heat 
rises to the top of the hover, the side heat plan is really 
•a combination plan as well as the other. One is a com- 
bination of top and bottom heat and the other is a com- 
bination of top and side heat. The writer unhesitatingly 
prefers the Yon Culm plan to all others, provided that 
the broods are small, never exceeding thirty chicks, and 
twenty or less is better. This matter of size of the 
brood is very important ; for when the source of comfort 
is at the side, the chicks will, if lacking in warmth even 
slightly, crowd towards it, and if numerous enough to 
form ranks three or four deep, crash the inner rank 
against the heat drum or tank and make it difficult for 
them to get out into the fresh air. There is a similar 
crowding closely to the body of the brooding hen, but 
her brood of the normal number of twelve to fifteen can 
all find room around her Avithout a turbulent outer rank 
of malcontents to make misery. The dram of the Yon 
Culin brooder has an external surface considerably 
greater than that of a hen, and a proportionate number 
of birds can gather around it comfortably. We have 
tried still larger drums to warm forty, fifty and sixty 
chicks respectively, and they would all work as well as 
the twenty-chick size if the chicks could be depended 
upon to always range themselves evenly around it. In 
fact, the drum might be as big as the Ferris wheel and 
serve to warm an almost innumerable number if thev 
would all go to bed in single file with no crowding. 
With only a score or so of birds and a dram of a size to 
correspond, no large crowd in a riot is possible, while, 
of course, the greater the whole number the greater the 
throng that is liable to gather in one spot, A merit of 
the side heat, hot-air dram is that, as the chicks increase 
in size, bigger drums and covers can be substituted 
without changing the lamp or dividing the broods. A 
demerit is that since there is a difficulty in always gang- 



316 AN EGG FARM. 

ing the heat of the drum to a nicety, it will overheat 
one side of a chick sometimes, after it has fallen asleep 
pressed snugly against it and the heat afterwards 
increases. Here the superiority of nature appears, as it 
does again and again, for the heat of the hen's body can 
never rise unduly. The side heat combined with the 
three-regulator plan will accomplish all that can be 
accomplished with a covered hover without constant 
supervision. 

The two principal methods of warming hovers are — 
by hot water, either in pipes or tanks, and by hot air. 
The tank and hot-air styles are adapted to single brood- 
ers, each with its lamp or its gas jet. The pipe method 
is designed for long rows of brooders }3laced side by side, 
the hot water circulating through pipes placed over the 
birds (Fig. 136), or under them beneath the floor, or both, 
as may be preferred, the water being heated, of course, 
by means of a boiler over a furnace for coal or wood 
located at one end, or the center, of the brooder house, 
as convenient. This obviates the necessity of filling and 
trimming numerous lamps when there are many brood- 
ers, but there is the disadvantage of having to fire up 
just the same when there are but few chicks on hand as 
if the brooder house were being run to its full cajmcity. 
There is a further feature, which is, that the same heat 
is applied to all the broods. This may be an advantage 
under some circumstances and a disadvantage in others. 
Single brooders are subdivided into the outdoor and 
indoor classes, the latter, of course, having no roof, as 
the roof of the brooder house in which they stand, 
answers. The outdoor brooders have a roof of their 
own, impervious to rain, and sides that may be closed in 
whole or in part, in case of strong winds or driving rain, 
or snow. The advantages of the outdoor brooder are 
that the chicks can, at the age of only a few clays, have 
outdoor exercise, the weather admitting, without the 



HEATING AND VENTILATING BBOODEBS. 317 

necessity for outside yards or roofed runways, of liberal 
area, or the exercising apparatus described in this book. 
The disadvantages, as compared with the indoor brood- 
ers are, that the attendant has to chase all over creation 
to do his work when brooders are scattered far enough 
from each other to keep the broods from mixing, and, 
worse than all the rest, the birds have to be confined in 
stormy weather to the narrow quarters of the brooder, a 
serious matter in parts of the country where rains are 
frequent. 

VENTILATING THE BEOODEE. 

If fresh air is necessary for the chick in the egg, still 
more is it absolutely necessary for the chick under the 
hover. How to get rid of poison exhaled by the lungs 
and still not subject the young birds to injurious drafts, 
is the problem, and it is not an easy one to solve either, 
without elaborate regulating apparatus or else constant 
supervision, both of which entail much expense. You 
can cheapen your arrangements and pitch in a lot of 
birds, expecting to have fifteen to twenty-five per cent 
die, and sell the rest. But the writer wants nothing 
whatever to do with any such barbarous practices. No 
attendant, who has the suitable make-up for a good 
attendant, can ever maintain zeal and enthusiasm when 
he has to officiate every day as undertaker and medical 
director. It would be amusing, were it not sad, to see 
how sedulously the owners of many brooder plants con- 
ceal their death rate statistics. 

When the chicks receive their first warm coat of feath- 
ers, they are approximately like adult birds, which are 
capable of enduring changes of 40° in twenty-four hours 
without much harm, if they have plenty of exercise and 
are sound and vigorous in every respect ; but the downy 
chick, especially at night, cannot withstand such vicis- 
situdes. Yet the tender youngling needs pure air to 



318 AN" EGG FARM. 

breathe as much or even more than the adult bird, and 
always the introduction of fresh, cool air interferes with 
the maintenance of steady heat. Of the two things, 
warmth and pure air, one is as important as the other. 
The earlier brooders all had covers or tops, two, two and 
a half, or three inches for the youngest birds, according 
to the breed, from the floor, and made adjustable so 
that they could be raised half an inch at a notch as the 
birds grew older. This cover was preferably removable 
for convenience in cleaning the floor of the hover and 
was made of boards with six or eight holes of one-half 
inch or three-fourths inch diameter bored through it for 
ventilation, some of which could be stopped with corks 
in cold weather if desired. But the use of this cover is 
always more or less antagonistic to a proper supply of 
both pure air and warmth, if the temperature of the 
brooder house is decidedly cooler than that of the hover. 
For if you close too many holes the air will be impure 
under the cover, shut in as it is by the curtain or fringe 
surrounding it, while if you open too many holes it will 
be too cool. 

It is so natural to conclude from the example of the 
mother hen that young chicks must have something to 
touch their backs, that operators unanimously adopted 
tops to their brooders lined with sheepskin, with the 
wool on, or soft cloth depending in numerous folds. Says 
Von Culin : 

"The flanrmelor woolen drapery which hangs down from the hover 
and helps retain the heat and gives a feeling of cosy comfort to the 
chicks is essential. Nature gives them side heat from the hen and 
soft covering, the feathers of the hen, and so must we if we want them 
to be comfortable and thrifty. Heated floor or ceiling is not enough. 
Would you like to heat a bedroom up to 70° or 80° and lie on the bed or 
floor with no covering ? We think you would prefer to have the room 
at 30° or 40° and put on a few blankets." 

The above would at first seem to be conclusive, but 
after all, the brooder top is but a sorry imitation of the 



HEATING AND VENTILATING BROODERS. 319 

cover which nature gives. Unlike the feathers, it is not 
furnished with millions of interstices for the air to strain 
through, nor will it permit the escape of the poisonous 
elements derived from the lungs of the birds. Mr. John 
Loughlin, proprietor of the largest broiler plant in the 
United States, conceived the idea of omitting the brood- 
ers, and put it in execution with great success, as suc- 
cess goes in artificial rearing. 

His hot-water pipes have nothing Avhatever over them, 
and the chicks congregate at night between these pipes 
and the floor, several hundred in a brood. By having 
the whole of the brooder room well warmed, the crowd- 
ing is reduced to a minimum. The absence of a top 
over the pipes does not make the chicks too cold, because 
the heat in the room, which contains thirty broods, is reg- 
ulated with great care, and the room well ventilated. The 
thirty broods are of thirty different ages, ranging from 
one day to thirty days respectively. When past the latter 
age they are removed to another room, heated to a lower 
degree, and, like the first, without tops over the hovers. 
This first-mentioned large room, with many -chicks, 
resembles, as regards heat, the Brooder of the Future 
which will be described later. Mr. Loughlin has shown 
how a thing may be clone well, as such things go, by 
doing enough of it so that it will pay to hire hands to 
do it. Yet, at best, the death rate at his establishment 
is too great. Take all the brooder houses in the coun- 
try, little and big, one-horse gig or six-horse coach, the 
trail of the serpent is over them all, so long as they fail 
to keep alive no more than seventy-five to eighty-five 
per cent of the innocents committed to them. 

Unless the usual mortality of brooder chicks can be 
reduced, the artificial method of rearing is of questiona- 
ble morality and a fit subject of investigation by the 
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. A 
friend of ours in South Dakota says in a letter : " Out 



320 AN EGG FARM. 

on the wild cattle ranges to the northwest of here, 
ranchmen with hearts of flint breed cattle, to have them 
run all winter without hay or shelter, subsisting on the 
dried grass and running the risks of unusually severe 
weather. Every three or four years a blizzard or an ice 
storm that covers the grass, followed by zero weather, 
kills by cold, combined with hunger, one-tenth, or one- 
fifth, perhaps, of the whole. And once in five or six 
years, sometimes three-fourths or five-sixths. But tak- 
ing the average of a series of years i;he business is profit- 
able. Now for every steer that dies a lingering death, a 
score or more have their ears and tail frozen off and one 
or more of their feet horribly mutilated, but they live 
through it. Fancy the owner turning in his warm bed 
at midnight and listening to the storm ! For my part 
I envy not the make-up of a man who is willing to get 
money that way. I would rather work by the day dig- 
ging ditches. And on the same line concerning poul- 
try, if the mortality of broiler chicks runs from fifteen 
or twenty to forty or fifty per cent in brooders, then, I 
say, to sheol with the brooders. Artificial rearing of 
chicks becomes, in such a case, an inquisition of torture 
to poor dumb brutes." 

The coming generations will commiserate their prede- 
cessors for being so barbarous, when the time arrives 
that, except through accident, as, for example, the 
inroads of a weasel or predatory cat, the poultry keeper 
who makes poultry raising a business will no more 
expect to have young chicks die than nowadays the 
farmer expects to have his young calves or colts die. In 
our newer states there are no members of the society 
with the long name- and everybody acts as he pleases 
towards dumb brutes and often pleases to act contempti- 
bly, but in the older states the society flourishes, and 
the miscreant who abuses a horse, or maltreats a cat or 
dog even, unnecessarily, is sure to hear from it. This 



HEATING AND VENTILATING BROODERS. 321 

shows that the growth of civilization is sure, even if 
slow, and justifies the prediction that when the world 
finds, as it will, that progress has rendered the avoid- 
ance of a big death rate in chicken raising comparatively 
easy, such an old-time massacre of the innocents will 
be frowned upon and considered disreputable in the high- 
est degree, if not punished by fine and imprisonment. 
21 



CHAPTEE XXXIII. 

THE BROODER OF THE FUTURE. 

As the cheapest thing for extensive artificial hatching 
will prove to be the large apartment, so the cheapest 
brooder the writer has already found to be a big room. 
"Hire a hall/' was once a popular phrase, and it applies 
here. To have 1000 chicks in a brooder house, twenty- 
five in a brooder, will take forty of these, to hold which 
the house will have to be large anyway. As commonly 
constructed, the pens attached to the brooders would 
have to be quite small, necessitating restricting locomo- 
tion of the inmates. There might be forty outside yards, 
using up a great lot of building material (cost ! cost !) 
but the chicks would have to be stived up closely in bad 
weather. The indoor exercisers might be provided, but 
there is " cost, cost," again. Now suppose the entire 
floor of a good sized room, built with high walls to 
enclose plenty of air, is accessible to each and every 
chick of the 1000 in all weathers. The first published 
account of an arrangement of this kind was given years 
ago by that veteran poultry raiser and author, and noble- 
hearted man, Mr. P. H. Jacobs, who reared some six 
hundred chickens in a not large room upstairs in Chi- 
cago, to the age of six weeks, with substantially no 
death rate. They were then removed to the country. 
There was a stove in the center of the room, where fire 
was burning constantly, and the birds ran in one flock 
all over the room by day, being separated at night into 
squads and lodged under hovers ranged at the walls. 
They had runs, literally, as the whole floor space of the 

322 



THE BROODER OF THE FUTURE. 323 

room was available for each, but when a brood is confined 
in a pen 3 or 4 ft.x6 ft., as is unhappily often the case, 
there is no opportunity for the prisoners to get up full 
speed. 

Now for a little improvement of the heating appa- 
ratus. Instead of the stove, use the combined hot-water 
and hot-air system, a method a better than which has 
never yet been found for warming dwellings, the 
same apparatus to answer for ten or more rooms, each of 
1000-chick capacity. Have attendants on duty day 
and night, of course, to govern the temperature of the 
rooms absolutely and keep up a constant: circulation of 
fresh air. The chickens in one of these big rooms must 
all run together in the daytime, and must be all of the 
same age and breed, so as to be of the same size and 
strength as far as possible. Any markedly inferior or 
superior birds to be culled out from time to time. The 
whole floor to be littered, and screened cracked corn or 
other fine feed stirred in. The whole space not occupied 
by the sleeping rooms to form one continuous exerciser. 
How to mix the ingredients ? Perfectly simple. It 
may not be advisable to introduce a donkey or goat to 
the floor to draw a specially constructed diminutive hay 
tedder, with many tines set close together, to throw the 
chaff, excelsior, or short cut straw, for the operator can 
draw it himself. The chickens get in his way and are 
immediately annihilated ? Not at all. The machine, 
together with the operator, must be enclosed, front, 
rear and on all sides, by a light movable frame 
attached to the tedder and covered with muslin, with a 
fringe of leather thongs, or tape, or narrow strips of 
heavy canvas, depending at the bottom in a way to 
always graze the ground. The writer operates such a 
screen and fringe out of doors, to keep chicks away 
while stirring straw to cover grain on the scratching 
grounds of half-grown chickens, by means of two wooden 



324 AX EGG FAKM. 

handles, like wheelbarrow handles, only lighter, attached 
to a wide girded waist belt, leaving both hands free to 
distribute grain. In using the large hay tedder pro- 
pelled by a team, for stirring straw on the scratching 
grounds of grown fowls, the driver uses one hand for the 
reins and scatters grain with the other, so much for each 
colonized flock, by measure, the entire outfit, horse, 
machine and all being enclosed with a muslin and fringe 
screen, the frame of which is attached to the machine 
and to the tips of specially built, extra long shafts in 
front of the horse. We are planning an attachment for 
both the large and small machines, the same for each — 
.except they are of different sizes — comprising some of the 
features of a farmer's field seed drill, so that eventually 
we will not have to scatter grain by hand. Millet and 
Kaffir corn, to the raising of both of which so large a 
portion of our country is admirably adapted, work well 
in the large-room plan, and are good grains for chicks 
and fowls of all ages. Never allow the litter to become 
entirely destitute of feed, for in a good tight room, such 
as has been described, no rats or mice can ever be baited 
nights, and something to eat should always be ready for 
the chicks whenever they are willing to work for it. 

"But the putting to bed of so many active, impetuous 
youngsters ; there's the rub," we fancy the reader 
exclaims. There is some work at this point surely, but 
no system whatever is entirely devoid of work. It will 
he noticed that feeding, watering, heating, ventilating, 
cleaning and providing exercise, as well as protecting 
against all manner of vicissitudes, are all accomplished 
at the very smallest amount of labor conceivable, there 
being so many in a room and so little space or distance 
to be traversed by the attendant ; therefore considerable 
time can be afforded in putting the birds to bed. Not 
so very much time will be needed, either. On occasion, 
the 1000 birds can be penned with a reasonably even 



THE BROODER OF THE FUTURE. 325 

division into ten flocks of about 100 each, in five min- 
utes, if the pens are made right and the doors are of the 
right size and shape and move at a touch, or eight 
minutes and no hurry. Afterwards, in a little longer 
time each flock can be subdivided, by using another set 
of pens, into smaller flocks of any desired size to prevent 
crowding. The whole operation can be managed by 
any person with enough ingenuity to be fit to attend to 
chickens, without scaring them in the least or hardly 
letting them know that anything has been done to them. 
Of course he will shuffle slowly through the crowd of 
very tame birds, with short steps, and will be provided 
with a specially coveted dainty, that all will be greedy 
for, though well fed already, and 100 chicks will get 
into a pen quicker than one would think possible. 
There are no bad effects in having young birds sleep 
with strange bedfellows every night. It would upset the 
domestic feeling and check the yield of laying hens to 
consort with a changing crowd, but it makes little dif- 
ference to chicks. 

As regards the temperature of the sleeping places, it 
must be 103° first, last and all the time, in the all- 
around the birds when they are very young. The oper- 
ator's business is to hold the heat right. That is what 
he is for, and he is supposed to have every facility for 
doing it, being supplied with as perfect an apparatus as 
that which was explained in the description of the Incu- 
bator of the Future. He can start currents of air at 
will, coming from outdoors and warmed before admis- 
sion. We said "sleeping places," not hovers, because 
we would, as practiced at the plant of Mr. Loughlin, 
have no covers over the hot-water pipes the chicks stay 
under o' nights. The floor they sleep on should be a 
little higher than the floor of the main room and made 
of wire cloth to let filth through and admit air from 
below for breathing. Thus, close air, exhausted of oxy- 



326 AN" EGG FAKM. 

gen and loaded with carbonic acid gas, will never be 
inhaled. The best brooder top in the world, no matter 
how well it is furnished with ventilating valves or shut- 
ters, and no matter whether these are operated by auto- 
matic regulators, or by personal supervision day and 
night, can never admit of such a constant supply of pure 
air as no top at all. When it is too warm and the valves 
are opened, there will be relief from the impure air of 
course. But suppose it is too cool. Why, the chicks 
will be in the same fix as a person is, who, on going to 
bed of a^cold winter night in an un warmed apartment, 
puts his head under the bedclothes to get warm, in 
which case carbonic acid gas accumulates rapidly. Or 
suppose it is neither too cold nor too warm under the 
hover but just at the correct notch. Why, the tem- 
perature is all right and the ventilation all wrong. The 
fact is, no matter how much of a stickler one is for imitat- 
ing nature, he cannot imitate the hen's style of a hover 
top closely enough to make the imitating business work 
in this instance ; and the best imitation of the hen's 
hover-top conditions is produced by no brooder top at all. 
It being very desirable to have chickens run and flap 
their wings as well as scratch, the size of the room per- 
mits this, and a feed shelf or other form of feed dropper, 
as described in another part of this book, can be very 
easily fitted up at each of the opposite sides or ends of 
the main littered area. The trouble with the ordinary 
little indoor pens attached to single brooders is,~that they 
are only 6 ft.x8 ft., or 10 ft.xl2 ft., or such a matter, 
and a bird cannot get under full headway in such space, 
any more than a locomotive can run a mile a minute in 
a switchyard. A large room gives opportunity for run- 
ning, flying, leaping and scratching, irrespective of the 
weather. Each room is supposed to communicate with 
a large yard outdoors, which should also have a feed 
dropper at each end. There is a special advantage in 



THE BROODER OF THE FUTURE. 327 

allowing the birds outdoors only when the weather is 
just right. Often in winter there will be a short time 
in the middle of the day when the yard can be used to 
good advantage, when access to it nights and morn- 
ings would do more harm than good. In case of snow, 
paths can be opened by a snow plow and team mov- 
ing through gates leading from one yard to another, 
whereas the labor of clearing small single brooder yards 
by hand is discouraging when one snowfall follows 
another. 



INDEX 



Alfalfa, for poultry 


25 


Chicks — Continued 




for tilt boxes 


234 


care of 


124 


Alley, sunken 


75 


and care of hens 


243 


Alternate system 


212 


calling the 


163 


Bearings, rounded 


192 


feeding young 


100 


Bell call, the 


165 


feeding young 


123 


Bin, for dry earth 


33 


feeding apparatus for 


323 


for earth 


141 


foes of 


134 


Bowel disease, cause of 


236 


grains for 


324 



test for 241 

Breeders, houses for 51 

overfat 120 
Broiler business in New 

Jersey 256 
Broilers, profits in 256 
Brooder, covers for 318 
house, details of 213 
Brooders, indoor and out- 
door 316 
lining for 318 
mammoth 322 
methods of heating 316 
old style 312 
personal supervision 310 
regulator 306 
requisites of 304 
side heat 314 
ten to manage 231 
top and bottom heat 314 
twenty to manage 232 
uncovered 319 
ventilating the 317 
Brooding, theories on 269 
Buildings, protected, sum- 
mer 50 
special 139 
Business poultry keeping 5 
Car for transportation 76 
Cellar for incubators 83 
Chaff for tilt boxes 234 
Chickens, by colony plan 19 
on a small scale 229 
coops for 97 
Chicks, at hatching time 279 
cause of dead 305 
early food for 132 
critical time for 132 



128 



healthy 235 

litter for 323 

mortality of brooder 257 

number in flock 324^ 

shelter for 136* 

strong, to get 130 

temperature for young 317 

trained to exercise 184 

waterlogged 289 

weaning 100 

Clockwork for tilt boxes 199 

Close breeding, place of 119 

Cold storage 14 

Combs, cutting 106 

large, drawbacks of 106 

Cook house 139 

Cooling not necessary 283 

Coops, for chickens 97 

moving the 99 

small, for chickens 98 

A-shaped 135 

temporary 213 

Colony plan 17 

Corn, value of 116 

Cover for feed shelf 203 

Covers for brooders • 318 

Crops for colony plan 23 

Cyphers, on incubators 274 

on moisture 293 

Cylinders, duck, filling 189 

feed 155 

for brooder house 220 

homemade 193 

operation of 156, 183 

spool 179 

Disease, treatment of 144 

Drag, homemade 20 

Dressing fowls, place for 141 



INDEX. 



329 



PAGE 

Dropper, feed 152 

Drum, hot air 315 

Ducks, feed cylinder for 187 

laying 186 

Pekin 186 

success with 18& 

Earth, preparing dry 29 

storing dry 32 

supply of 16 

Egg, composition of 287 

route, an 8 

Eggs, carrier for 28 

cooling 281 

fertile 121 
fertile, to secure 55, 259 

glazed by hen . 288 

overheated 292 

setting the 121 
turning 268, 284, 286 

Exercise, arrangement for 44 

for breeders 53 

for breeders, need of 149 

for chicks, need of 255 

importance of 46 

in runways 177 

testing value of 255 

to cure bowel disease 237 

Exerciser, by alternate 

system 212 

details of 152 

for ducks 187 

indoor, parallel 217 

outdoor 172 

simple 149 

Failure, cause of 246 

Feed box 43 

for. chickens 99 

Feeding, by colony plan 20, 21 

high pressure, mode of 109 

room 43 

soft food 206 

Feed, shelf and gate 86 

cover for 203 

pouch 196 

shelf, indoor 203 

shelf, operating 201 

sieve 195 

Fences, movable 51 

Fence, wire netting 53 

Fertility, to secure 55 

Floor, a dry ' 49 

construction of 227 

spare, for chicken coop 137 

Food, kinds of 112 

soft, place ot 114 

Fowls, foi breeding, sale of 250 

foi sitters , no 

to an acre 111 



PAGE 

Gates for sitters 85 

Grain, broadcasting the 90 

food, variety of 113 

for cylinder 155 

scattering for chicks 133 

Granary and cook house 139 
Hammer, construction of 197 

homemade 205 

moving the 204 

operated indoors 199 
Hammonton,experience at 257 

Hand tilt boxes 230 

Harrow, homemade 20 

Hatching, by wholesale 66 

house described 83 

management of 123 

poor, causes of 148 

Hatches, large secret of 273 

Heating, methods of 142 

two modes of 271 

Hens, when to kill 108 

Hospital, chicken 141 
House, arranged for sum- 
mer 40, 47 

Houses for breeders 51 

House, for brooders 213 

for early pullets 47 

for feeding in winter 44 

for layers 35 

for runways 25 

for sitters 62 

for sitters, location 128 

interior devices for 39 

movable 22 

protected 48 

winter 36 

winter care of 40 

Hover, a cool " 309 

Inbreeding, effect of 119 

Incubation, and moisture 287 

difficulties of 289 

natural process of 275 

opinions on 269 

Incubators, cheap 270 

cellar for 83 

Incubator, cellar, the ideal 298 

idea overworked 69 

lamp style of 274 

methods, various 268 

of the future 299 

regulation of 290 

regulators 274 

requisites of 256 

room 298 

temperature of 277 

ventilation of 294 

antiquity of 261 

compared 271 



330 



INDEX. 



Incubator — Continued 




Poultry — Con tinned 




in Egypt 


261 


industry, divisions of 


1 


inferior to hens 


265 


in small flocks 


4 


not economical 


122 


in the south central states 2 


old types of 


261 


plant of the future 


246 


public tests of 


272 


plants expensive 


246 


studying 


274 


Pullets preferred 


108 


under ground 


298 


Pure bred stock, sale of 


250 


Insects, to prevent 


144 


Railroad for poultry house 


75 


trap for 


23 


Range needed 


111 


Intensive plan 


146 


Ration, balancing the 


114 


Jacobs, P. H., experience 




Regulation, double 


309 


of 


322 


Regulators, for incubators 


274 


Labor, cost of 


248 


plan of three 


310 


hired 


248 


Roads for poultry farm 


28 


Lamp, care of 


311 


Room, large for incubators 


300 


styles of 


274 


Roost for hatching house 


96 


Layers, and sitters 


87 


Root bin 


141 


breeds for 


102 


Runs, long, advantages of 


59 


condiments for 


134 


Runways, for breeders 


57 


feeding the 


87 


foi chicKens 


24 


producing 


118 


for outdoor exercise 


172 


selecting for 


103 


movable, for sitters 


66 


separating from sitters 


89 


series of 


175 


Leghorns, large combs of 


104 


Scraper, earth 


29 


Lice, killers, patent 


145 


Selection, for laying 


119 


on young chicks 


124 


of layers 


103 


Location, an ideal 


9 


Shades for fowls and chicks 136 


a northern 


12 


Shade, temporary 


45 


a southern 


10 


Shaft, homemade 


193 


Locations compared 


11 


wooden 


192 


Machine for turning eggs 


285 


Shelf, feed 


57 


Machinery, for mixing 


158 


feed, operating 


201 


importance of 


6 


Shelter, winter 


137 


regulating labor 


252 


Shelves, changing the 


90 


time saved by 


244 


Shovel for dry earth 


30 


Mats, use of 


49 


Sieve, for feeding 


195 


Meat, need of 


114 


for indoor use 


197 


scraps, use of 


117 


operating the 


197 


Millet for chicks 


235 


Sitters, activity of 


125 


Mixing food and straw 


150 


apparatus for 


77 


Moisture, during incuba- ■ 




best fowl for 


70 


tion 


287 


care of in detail 


80 


Von Culin on 


289 


cost of 


70 


Movable houses 


22 


fowls for 


110 


Nests, for sitters 


63 


habits of 


275 


for sitters to make 


122 


handling the 


95 


marking the 


89 


houses for 


62 


Nursery apartment 


141 


in mild climates 


74 


Pens and runways 


176 


in small pens 


67 


Pen, for moving fowls 


42 


large flocks of 


88 


temporary for chicks 


136 


nest for 


63 


Perch 


222 


program for 


92 


Pit for tilt box 


229 


to remove 


128 


Platform for drying earth 


31 


versus incubators 


72 


Pouch, wire, for feeding 


191 


Sitting, to encourage 


111 


Poultry, business, compe- 




Sled for poultry farm 


28 


tition in 


245 


Soft feed, giving 


206 



INDEX. 



331 



PAGE 

Soil, kind of 14 

Southern poultry raising 2 

Spool for cylinder axle 179 

Straw, stirring the 60 

System for ten brooders 231 

Tank, for ducks 188 

Tedder, use of 20 

Temperature, at hatching 

time 280 

for chicks, limits of 308 

governed automatically 309 

in incubation 277 

Testing eggs, room for 299 

Thermostat 274 

Tilt box ,- 158 

axle for 190, 224 

compound 222 

flap for 164 

for brooder house 217, 220 

for small yards 258 

layer, to manage 234 

material for 234 

operating 159, 165 

to turn 170 

wooden axle for 160 

Transportation facilities 14 

Trap, for sitters 76 

Trap setter 96 

Trays, changing the 287 

Trough for soft feed 207 



Turning eggs, 284 
Underground fowl house 49 
Vegetable food, 45 
"Ventilation 47 
during incubation 294 
for chicken house 97 
of chicken coops 134 
of incubator cellar 299 
of main building 143 
Vigor, sources of 121 
to secure 54 
Vitality, need of 57 
Von Culin on moisture 289 
Wagon, for carrying earth 32 
for poultry farm 27 
Watering fowls, wagon for 28 
Water supply 26 
Weather strips 46 
Weight for feeding appa- 
ratus 211 
Western poultry farms 9 
Wild fowls, nature of 3 
Windbreaks 45 
Windows, apparatus for 217 
to open and close 219 
Winter, house for 36 
quarters 45 
Wooden feeding apparatus 194 
Work bench 141 



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